Abstract
Developing coordinated motor control is essential for competent interactions with the surrounding world and requires a balanced multisensory integration. This integration can be challenged under altered sensory feedback, as is the case for vision in immersive virtual reality (VR). While recent works suggest that a virtual sensory environment alters visuomotor integration in healthy adults, little is known about the effects on younger individuals. Here, we assessed the development of head-trunk coordination in children aged 6 to 10 years and young adults using an immersive flight simulator and a virtual joint angle reproduction task. Contrarily to previous results, when vision was decoupled from the steering body part, only older children and adults displayed a joint (‘en-bloc’) head-torso operation mode. Our results reveal that immersive VR affects the coordination strategy in younger children and highlight the immaturity of postural control through the inability to implement a simplified coordination strategy. These findings have implications for pediatric applications of immersive VR, and reveal its usability as an investigation tool for sensorimotor maturation.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.