Generalized and lateralized interference between concurrent tasks performed by children: Effects of age, sex, and skill

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Abstract
Normal right‐handed children in Grades 2–5 engaged in unimanual finger tapping while performing a series of concurrent tasks. In the first of three experiments, recitation and oral reading interfered to a greater degree with right‐hand tapping than with left‐hand tapping, and the asymmetry of interference from reading was greater for poorer readers than for better readers. In Experiment 2, silent reading also interfered asymmetrically with finger tapping, but a visuospatial task generated bilaterally equal interference. Boys outperformed girls on the visuospatial task, and there was a sex difference in the laterality of interference. A similar visuospatial task in Experiment 3 yielded the same sex difference in interference laterality, even though the overall performance of girls and boys did not differ significantly. Age‐related differences in generalized interference occurred for tasks entailing vocalization, but there were no age‐related differences in lateralized interference. The results confirm the validity of concurrent‐task interference as an indicator of lateralized cerebral processing. However, the experiments show that, among neurologically normal children, skill level and strategy may influence the amount and pattern of interference between tasks.