Intrahemispheric response competition between vocal and unimanual performance in normal adult human males.

Subjects balanced a dowel rod vertically on the left and right index finger singly and while simultaneously repeating phrases. With right-handed subjects who had no left-handed relatives, concurrent verbalization shortened right- but not left-handed balancing. Increased phonetic difficulty of the phrases produced an increased decrement on right-handed balancing, but left-handed balancing was unchanged; it also produced more verbalization errors on trials with the right hand, but not with the left. Concurrent verbalization shortened balancing duration with both hands of left-handers. Right-handers with left-handed relatives produced variable results. Concurrent humming also selectively interfered with right-handed balancing. It was concluded that the results conform to an interpretation based on intrahemispheric interference between incompatible, simultaneously produced sets of responses.