title: Dynamic action in virtual environments: constraints on the accessibility of action knowledge in children and adults.
abstract: In a series of three experiments, we probed the accessibility of action knowledge in different versions of a virtual environment (VE) with 7-year-old children and adults. Using a PHANToM haptic interface, participants performed a virtual throwing task in which they tried to propel a ball from a table to hit a target on the ground. In Experiments 1 and 2, the virtual scene was presented on a computer monitor, and, in Experiment 3, it was projected by using a video projector so that the vertical and horizontal dimensions and the spatial location of the VE corresponded to the real-world dimensions. Results indicate that action knowledge is accessible even in a nonimmersive VE, but also suggest that the need to recalibrate perceptual-motor mappings constrains the accessibility of this kind of intuitive knowledge.
authors.affiliation: University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland. moritz.daum@cbs.mpg.de
authors.forename: Moritz M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Daum
authors.forename: Horst
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Krist
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D004777:Environment; D030141:Feedback, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult