Bimanual Performance in Unpredictable Virtual Environments A Lifespan Study

Abstract—Interaction and interface design for the young and the elderly has become an important research topic. The purpose of the research described here is to characterize motor performance in virtual environments across the lifespan. Participants between the ages of 7 and 90 years simultaneously reached to pick up two objects with their right and left hands in a desktop virtual environment. On random trials, objects were unexpectedly moved to new locations. Results indicated that older adults used different movement strategies in the virtual environment when compared to results from natural environment experiments. Further, children and older adults responded to perturbation conditions with different movement time and hand coupling strategies than young and middle-aged adults. These results suggest that age and task-specific design is necessary to ensure general access and optimal performance in virtual environments. Keywords- virtual environment; aging; motor control; bimanual reach to grasp I