Gavin Buckingham, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre
for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario in
Canada, and his PhD supervisor Dr. David Carey, asked left- and
right-handed participants to reach first toward a pair of
targets with both hands at the same time and, immediately
afterwards, toward a new single target with only their closest
hand. Just before they began the reach, subjects were given a
short vibratory pulse on one of their hands, giving them a clue
about where the new target would appear, and hence which hand
should perform this second portion of the reach. On a small
proportion of trials, the pulse was given to the wrong hand,
which meant that subjects had to restrain the reach with this
incorrectly-cued hand in order to make the reach with the
correct hand. The right-handed subjects had far greater trouble
dealing with this incorrect cue when it was given to their right
hands, making more mistakes and taking longer to successfully
inhibit the reaches, almost as if the ri