An examination of practice and laterality effects on the Purdue Pegboard and Moving Beans with Tweezers

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation of practice or learning and laterality on the Purdue Pegboard and the Moving Beans with Tweezers test. The subjects were 30 right-handed, healthy young male adults (age: M = 21.1, SD = 1.9 yr.). The subjects performed both tests five times with each hand. A two-way analysis of variance (hand x trial) for scores on the Purdue Pegboard showed that Trial 1 had a significantly lower mean than Trials 4 and 5 with the dominant hand, and scores on Trials 1 and 3 were lower than that on Trial 5 for the nondominant hand. For the Moving Beans with Tweezers test, Trial 1 had a significantly lower score than Trial 5 with the nondominant hand. The dominant hand produced significantly higher values on all trials of both tests. Intraclass correlation coefficients of Trials 2 and 3 were high, and means were significantly higher for the dominant hand. A correlation between other tests was not high (r = .37-.46) for both hands. All correlations among five trials on both tests were significant and high (Purdue Pegboard-Dominant: average r =.72, [r] = .60-.80, Purdue Pegboard-Nondominant: average r = .59, [r] = .43-.76), (Moving Beans-Dominant: average r = .74, [r] = .57-.81, Moving Beans-Nondominant: average r =.71, [r] = .55-.87). Correlations among five trials for the ratio of dominant:nondominant hand on both tests were significant and moderate (Moving Beans: average r = .28, [r] = .08-.57, Purdue Pegboard: average r = .41, [r] = .19.56). Performance with the dominant hand is superior to that of the nondominant hand on both tests. Practice effects are found for both tests across five trials. The Moving Beans with Tweezers test also showed laterality of practice effects. The two tests may measure different abilities.