How Do Immature Perceptual-Motor Skills Put Child Cyclists at Risk for Injury?

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。预防伤害显然在儿童健康方面发挥着不可或缺的作用，因为意外伤害是儿童和青年死亡的主要原因。自行车撞车是儿童晚期和青春期早期严重受伤的最常见原因之一。机动车辆涉及约三分之一的所有自行车相关脑损伤和90%的自行车碰撞导致的所有死亡。制定防止儿童骑自行车者与机动车碰撞的计划的关键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感知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。使用一个沉浸式的，交互式的自行车模拟器，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。第一个是协调运动与视觉信息。我们对儿童过马路行为的研究有一个强有力的发现，即儿童选择与成人相同大小的间隙，但在开始过马路时，他们留下的距离较小。因此，儿童骑自行车的人在清理迎面而来的汽车时，剩下的时间要少得多。这使得儿童骑自行车的人面临更大的碰撞风险，因为他们没有太多的时间从错误中恢复过来，比如脚从踏板上滑下来。我们将讨论的感知运动发展的第二个方面是灵活地调整运动以适应不断变化的环境。熟练的过马路要求骑自行车的人迅速适应变化，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开始时比成年人留下更少的进展的假设。这些包括1）不成熟的运动准备策略，2）做出“去-不去”决定的问题，以及3）难以同步自我和物体运动。第二组实验将研究儿童如何调整他们的过马路行为，以应对不断变化的环境，以及这些经验如何影响后来的过马路行为。通过将基础和应用问题的研究整合到一个单一的研究计划中，这项工作将有助于我们理解感知运动功能的发展，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.