Navigating Virtual Collisions: InsightsInto Perception-Action Differencesin Children and Young AdultsUsing a HeadOn Avoidance Task

Children tend to make more last-minute locomotor adjustments than adultswhen avoiding stationary obstacles. The purpose of this study was to compareavoidance behaviors of middle-aged children (10-12 years old) with youngadults during a head-on collision course with an approaching virtual pedestrian.Participants were immersed in a virtual environment and completed a perceptualdecision-making task in which they had to respond to the future direction of anapproaching virtual pedestrian once they disappeared. Following the perceptualtask, participants walked along an 8-m pathway toward a goal, while avoiding acollision with a virtual pedestrian who approached along the midline than veeredtoward the left, right, or continued walking straight. Results revealed that childrenwere able to correctly predict the future directions of the virtual pedestrian similarto adults, albeit at a slower response time (0.55 s vs. 0.33 s). During the actiontask, children initiated a deviation in their travel path later (i.e., closer to the virtualpedestrian) compared to adults (1.65 s vs. 1.52 s). Children were also morevariable in their onset of deviation and time-to-contact. Although children appearto have developed adult-like perceptual abilities and can avoid an approachingvirtual pedestrian, children employ riskier avoidance strategies and are highlyvariable, suggesting middle-aged children are stillfine-tuning their perception-action system