Are Nonproper Chopstick Holders Clumsier Than Proper Chopstick Holders in Their Manual Movements?

Abstract

To examine the working hypothesis that a lack of childhood training in the fine-detailed finger movements illustrated by learning to use chopsticks properly as a child has later rendered such individuals clumsier in the execution of other more adult-like motor movements, four experiments were conducted. Groups of proper and nonproper users (both males and females) performed a task of picking up rice grains (Exp. 1), a pin-down task (Exp. 2), a task of unfastening nuts from bolts (Exp. 3), and a knot-tying task (Exp. 4). Only on the rice-grain transfer task and the knot-tying task, proper chopstick users showed better performance than nonproper users. On the pin-down task and the nuts-and-bolts task, no difference was found between groups. These results suggest that there is no clear evidence to support the hypothesis that a lack of early training for proper chopstick use makes such individuals more clumsy as adults in at least some motor movements.