There are many situations in which you think about something or talk to somebody while you do some movement with your body at the same time. For example, you might talk about your homework with your friend while walking to school. Or you might ride your bike while listening to music. At first sight, these situations do not seem to be tricky, and you have probably done such things many times in your life. But what happens when you need to cross a busy street on your way to school? Maybe you will stop talking for a while and focus your attention on the traffic, so that you can reach the other side of the street safely. Researchers who are interested in the relationship between thinking and moving often ask people to perform tasks with both thinking and moving components in a laboratory. The researchers want to find out whether people's performances on the movement task or the thinking task or both get worse when they need to do two things at the same time.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00030