Gaze and Movement Assessment (GaMA): Inter-site validation of a visuomotor upper limb functional protocol

Abstract

Background Successful hand-object interactions require precise hand-eye coordination with continual movement adjustments. Quantitative measurement of this visuomotor behaviour could provide valuable insight into upper limb impairments. The Gaze and Movement Assessment (GaMA) was developed to provide protocols for simultaneous motion capture and eye tracking during the administration of two functional tasks, along with data analysis methods to generate standard measures of visuomotor behaviour. The objective of this study was to investigate the reproducibility of the GaMA protocol across two independent groups of non-disabled participants, with different raters using different motion capture and eye tracking technology. Methods Twenty non-disabled adults performed the Pasta Box Task and the Cup Transfer Task. Upper body and eye movements were recorded using motion capture and eye tracking, respectively. Measures of hand movement, angular joint kinematics, and eye gaze were compared to those from a different sample of twenty non-disabled adults who had previously performed the same protocol with different technology, rater and site. Results Participants took longer to perform the tasks versus those from the earlier study, although the relative time of each movement phase was similar. Measures that were dissimilar between the groups included hand distances travelled, hand trajectories, number of movement units, eye latencies, and peak angular velocities. Similarities included all hand velocity and grip aperture measures, eye fixations, and most peak joint angle and range of motion measures. Discussion The reproducibility of GaMA was confirmed by this study, despite a few differences introduced by learning effects, task demonstration variation, and limitations of the kinematic model. The findings from this study provide confidence in the reliability of normative results obtained by GaMA, indicating it accurately quantifies the typical behaviours of a non-disabled population. This work advances the consideration for use of GaMA in populations with upper limb sensorimotor impairment.