Discrimination of grip force for preschool children aged 5 to 6 years.

The ability to discriminate grip force was investigated in 30 preschool children aged 5 to 6 years in an experiment controlling for motivation and muscle fatigue. The subjects were required to maintain a relatively high force during the discrimination with forces of the standard stimulus being 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 kgf. Comparison stimuli changed at an interval of 0.1 kgf. Discrimination was measured in terms of the lower threshold, upper threshold, and interval of uncertainty. Since the statistical analyses indicated that there were no significant gender differences, data for boys and girls were combined. Although the upper and lower thresholds and the interval of uncertainty increased with the force required by the standard stimuli, Weber fractions did not remain constant when the stimulus intensity changed, unlike the findings in previous studies for adults.