Characterization of bilateral reaching development using augmented reality games

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Bilateral coordination is often impaired in neurodevelopmental conditions like cerebral palsy, developmental coordination disorder, and autism spectrum disorder.
• Objective clinical assessments and age-based norms for quantifying bilateral coordination are lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To utilize augmented reality and computer vision to characterize bilateral reaching abilities in typically developing children.
• To establish age-based norms for bilateral coordination in children.

Main Methods:

• 133 typically developing children aged 6-17 years performed symmetric and asymmetric bilateral reaching tasks in an augmented reality game.
• Performance was analyzed by the number of target pairs reached within 50 seconds and the time lag between hands.
• Computer vision and augmented reality technologies were employed for data acquisition and analysis.

Main Results:

• Bilateral reaching performance, including targets reached and hand lag, developed in parallel for both symmetric and asymmetric tasks.
• Performance development slowed but did not plateau after age 12.
• Children performed better on symmetric tasks than asymmetric tasks, with decreased hand lag variability with age.
• Females generally outperformed males, with the most significant gender differences observed in 10-11 year olds.

Conclusions:

• Symmetric and asymmetric reaching abilities demonstrate parallel development throughout childhood and adolescence.
• Augmented reality and computer vision provide a feasible method for quantifying bilateral coordination.
• This approach has potential applications for assessing clinical populations with coordination impairments.