Results from recent studies investigating the dynamics of bimanual coordination have led to contrasting viewpoints concerning the relative contribution of perceptual and motor processes in mediating coordinative stability. At one end of the spectrum is the belief that coordination is governed primarily by physical limitations such as neuro-muscular constraints and that perceptual factors play little role (Carson, 2004). At the other end, the stability of bimanual coordination is depicted as completely arbitrary with respect to the physical properties of the individual components, depending instead only on the directional and visuo-spatial relationship between them (Mechsner, 2004). An alternative to these segregated approaches is provided by coordination dynamics (Kelso, 1995) which proposes that the relative contribution of perceptual and motor processes depends on the context as determined by an ensemble of constraints acting both within (Kelso et al., 2001) and between individuals (Schmidt et al., 1990; Temprado et al., 2003) as well as between stimuli and responses (Kelso et al., 1990). In the present study we investigate the relative role of visual and motor (a)symmetries in finger coordination between individuals. Our aim is to demonstrate that even with no structural coupling between the components, both co-activation of homologous muscles and visuo-spatial constraints influence the stability of the coordination. Further, we hypothesize that stability is determined not only by the relative contribution of these two constraints, but by the mutual influence they have on each other.
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