An examination of hand reaction time and hand skills of the musicians WHO play different instruments and those of non-musician individuals

Objective: The aim of this study is investigating the hand reaction time and hand skills of non-musicians and musicians who play different instruments and also determining the relationship between Nelson hand reaction test (NHRT) and mobile device application (MDA). Methods: There are total of 128 people with musicians who play wind (32), strings (32), keys (32) instruments and non-musicians (32) in this study. Individuals were evaluated the simple reaction time with NHRT, discriminative reaction time with MDA, gross hand skill with Minnesota Manual Dexterity Test (MMDT) and fine hand skill Purdue Pegboard Test (PPT) in this study. Each individual was evaluated only once. Results: Non-musician group is more successful than musician group for NHRT (p<0,001). The nonmusician group was more successful than the group that play the key instrument (p <0.001). According to the instrument groups, the group that play the wind instrument is more successful than the other instrument groups (p <0.001). Purdue pegboard left-handed (p = 0.027) and bilateral placement test (p= 0.048), the key that play instrument group is more successful than other instrument groups. There was no difference between the groups in the other tests (p> 0.05). There was a significant positive low level correlation between NHRT and MDA (rs = 0.246 p = 0.005). Conclusion: Motor abilities should be evaluated in determining the motor performance of individuals. In the field of physiotherapy and rehabilitation, it is recommended that development of evaluation methods according to positions of musicians holding and playing their instruments. Keywords: Motor ability, Nelson hand reaction test, mobile device application, purdue pegboard test