Home // International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems, volume 6, numbers 3 and 4, 2013 // View article
Authors:
Andrea H Mason
Patrick J Grabowski
Drew N Rutherford
Andrew R Minkley
Keywords: virtual environment; aging; motor control; kinematic analysis; bimanual reach to grasp
Abstract:
Immersive virtual environments show great promise for use in applications such as design and prototyping, data visualization, and rehabilitation of motor impairments. However, our understanding of how people of various ages process and use sensory information to complete tasks within these environments is limited. The purpose of the research described here was to characterize motor performance in virtual environments across the lifespan on simple, foundational skills. Our results indicated that children and older adults used different strategies when performing the task when compared to young adults. While older adults adjusted for the virtual environment by planning a slower movement, children compensated for the artificial environment by relying on feedback to a greater extent. Movement strategies for the youngest and oldest groups were also different in the virtual environment when compared to results from natural environment experiments. We conclude that children and older adults do not plan movements or make use of sensory information in a similar fashion to young and middle-aged adults when performing in a virtual environment. The design implications of these results are related to differences in needed sensory information between children, young and older adults, the transfer of training effects between virtual and real environments, and important differences between performance and learning applications.
Pages: 223 to 234
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2013. Used with permission.
Publication date: December 31, 2013
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-2679