KINARM for kids

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Declines in motor control result from issues with motor cognitive perception control which is a person's abilityto perceive and execute a task. These can result from disability, but differences are also evident in other injuriessuch as concussion. The KINARM Exoskeleton is used to help assess neurological impairments duringreaching tasks. Participants sit in the KINARM with their arms supported at the upper arm, forearm, and handwhile they complete different virtual tasks. This support allows motor function to be tested independent of theuser's strength. Tests include repeating patterns, visually guided reaching, hitting virtual balls, and mirroringarm positions. This robot has been shown to effectively evaluate adult motor control. From normalized datasets, the differences among groups (neurologically impaired vs non-impaired) can be determined.However, the ability to use this system for children has been limited. Children undergo rapid mental andphysical development, and it is currently unclear if the data analysis methods used to assess adults would workfor younger subjects. The rapid development could cause extremely large variance in subject performance, andthe data may not be normally distributed. The purpose of this research is to determine protocols for testing oftypically developed children to then allow for a normalized database to be collected with the view to comparemotor control with individuals with disability such as cerebral palsy.