Study of Navigation Skills in Cerebral Palsy for Assessment and Rehabilitation in Immersive Virtual Reality

Study of Navigation Skills in Cerebral Palsy for Assessment and Rehabilitation in Immersive Virtual Reality

Spatial navigation refers to the ability to maintain a sense of direction/location while moving around the environment so to find one's way. It includes abilities such as orienting in complex environments,perceiving distance and planning routes to distant locations as well as mentally representing the reciprocal relations of landmarks in space (Lawton, 2010; Wolbers & Hegarty 2010. Spatial navigation involves the precision in encoding multisensorial (visual, vestibular, proprioceptive)experiences, as well as to form mental representations to be used to guide behavior (Bianchini et al.,2014).

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by movement and posture disorders causing activity limitation. Impairment in many other functions is common in CP including visual spatial competences and spatial organization. In this study the investigators meant to explore the navigation and learning strategies in children with CP.

Inclusion Criteria:.

• diagnosis of bilateral CP;
• age between 8 and 14 years old;
• severity of motor impairment classified in levels I, II and III, according to the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) (Palisano et al., 1997)
• or according to the Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) (Eliasson et al., 2006);
• ability to follow instructions.

Exclusion Criteria:

• severe muscle spasticity and/or contracture,
• a diagnosis of severe learning disability,
• behavioral problems,
• visual or hearing difficulties that would affect the feasibility of proposed activities and/or compliance