Self-Touching, Performance, and Attentional Processes

Abstract

Previous observations in our laboratory suggested that self-touching, the continuous movements of the hands on the body or onto each other, would increase during periods of attentional disruption or interference. The present study explored this notion further by testing whether or not variation in self-touching is associated with variation in performance in three different experimental tasks. The results indicate that certain types of continuous self-touching are consistently and significantly associated with three different performance measures. Since performance in a task is usually viewed as involving attentional processes, the present findings suggest a link between activity of hands and variations in the effective deployment of attention.