Immature Perceptual-Motor Skills Child Cyclists at Risk

描述(由申请人提供)：减少意外伤害是2010年健康人倡议的十大优先事项之一。预防伤害显然对儿童健康起着不可或缺的作用，因为意外伤害是导致儿童和年轻人死亡的主要原因。自行车撞车事故是儿童后期和青春期早期严重受伤的最常见原因之一。在所有与自行车相关的脑损伤中，约有三分之一与机动车有关，在自行车撞车造成的所有死亡中，有90%与机动车有关。在开发防止儿童骑自行车和机动车相撞的程序时，关键的第一步是了解为什么会发生这种碰撞。这项多学科研究提案的目标是研究不成熟的知觉-运动功能如何使儿童在过马路时面临汽车与自行车相撞的风险。使用身临其境的交互式自行车模拟器，我们将研究感知-运动发展的两个重要方面如何影响过马路行为。第一个是协调运动和视觉信息。我们对儿童过马路行为的研究有一个强有力的发现：儿童选择与成人相同大小的差距，但当他们开始横穿马路时，他们留下的差距更小。因此，当儿童骑自行车的人为迎面而来的汽车让路时，他们剩下的时间要少得多。这使得儿童自行车手面临更大的碰撞风险，因为他们没有太多的时间来从错误中恢复过来，比如脚从踏板上滑落。我们将讨论的知觉-运动发展的第二个方面是灵活地使运动适应不断变化的环境。熟练的过马路需要骑自行车的人迅速适应变化，比如间隙大小的分布。第一组拟议的实验将测试关于为什么儿童在一开始就比成年人留得更少的假设。这些问题包括1)不成熟的动作准备策略，2)做出“去不去”的决定的问题，以及3)自我和物体运动同步的困难。第二组实验将考察儿童如何根据不断变化的环境调整他们的过马路行为，以及这些经历如何影响后来的过马路行为。通过将基础问题和应用问题的研究结合到一个单一的研究计划中，这项工作将有助于我们理解知觉-运动功能的发展，并有助于我们理解儿童骑自行车受伤的根本原因。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Reducing unintentional injuries is one of the top ten priorities of the Healthy People 2010 initiative. Injury prevention clearly plays an integral role in children's health, as unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in children and young adults. Bicycle crashes are among the most common causes of severe injuries in late childhood and early adolescence. Motor vehicles are involved in approximately one-third of all bicycle- related brain injuries and in 90% of all fatalities resulting from bicycle crashes. A critical first step in developing programs to prevent collisions between child cyclists and motor vehicles is understanding why such collisions occur. The goal of this multi-disciplinary research proposal is to examine how immature perceptual-motor functioning puts children at risk for car-bicycle collisions when crossing roads. Using an immersive, interactive bicycling simulator, we will examine how two important aspects of perceptual-motor development influence road-crossing behavior. The first is coordinating motor movement with visual information. A robust finding from our research on children's road-crossing behavior is that children choose the same size gaps as adults, but leave less headway when they start to cross. Consequently, child cyclists end up with far less time to spare when they clear the path of the oncoming car. This puts child cyclists at greater risk for a collision because they have less time available to recover from an error such as a foot slipping off the pedal. The second aspect of perceptual-motor development we will address is flexibly adapting movement to changing circumstances. Skilled road crossing requires that cyclists adjust quickly to changes such as the distribution of gap sizes. The first set of proposed experiments will test hypotheses about why children leave less headway when starting off than do adults. These include 1) immature movement preparation strategies, 2) problems with making "go-no go" decisions, and 3) difficulty with synchronizing self and object movement. The second set of experiments will examine how children adjust their road-crossing behavior in response to changing circumstances and how these experiences influence later road-crossing behavior. By bringing together the study of basic and applied issues into a single program of research, this work will contribute both to our understanding of the development of perceptual-motor functioning and to our understanding of the underlying causes of child bicycling injuries.