Alessandra Crecchi

Object use affects motor planning in infant prehension

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors underlying the ability to plan object-oriented grasping movements in the first two years of life. In particular, we were interested in evaluating the relationship between manual motor planning, object use and infant-parent interaction. In order to achieve this aim, grasping behaviors of nineteen healthy infants, aged nine to 25 months, were examined during naturalistic play sessions with a standard set of toys. Our main finding was that, regardless of age, infants perform a better manual planning when they use an object in a functional rather than non-functional way, suggesting that the planning of an action also depends on knowing the functional properties of an object. In addition, we found that the ability to use objects in a functional way was strongly affected by infant-parent interaction. Thus, level of object use and environmental role must be taken into account in order to understand the development of manual motor planning.

Serious Game and Wearable Haptic Devices for Neuro Motor Rehabilitation of Children with Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of disorders that affect the development of movement and posture, resulting in limited activities. To optimize pediatric neuro-rehabilitation and to complement conventional occupational therapies, serious game based therapies for upper limb (UL) rehabilitation have been developed or adapted for the pediatric field during recent years. In this work, we present the design and development of UL rehabilitation scenario for CP patients, based on Serious Games (SG) and enhanced by immersive virtual reality (VR) with haptic feedback to increase engagement and provide rich, congruent multi-sensory feedback during virtual interaction.