The Development of Spatial Orientation in Children After Perinatal Stroke
Abstract
To enable investigation of spatial orientation abilities across a range of ages and developmental abilities, we developed a navigation task comprised of a video game in a virtual museum in which subjects were required to find different rooms with distinct themes. We then validated the task by studying a large number of healthy young adults and confirming a strong correlation with self-reported orientation abilities in everyday life (Chapter 2). We also analysed performance on the navigation task as it related to demographics and video game use, verifying previously observed gender differences and demonstrating that individuals with a longer history of video game play, as well as participants who played video games that required navigation, performed better than individuals without experience navigating in video games. Our evidence, therefore, supports the hypothesis that better navigation and orientation skills in individuals playing video games are likely due to the consistent practice of those skills while playing for entertainment (Chapter 2).
Children who have experienced a stroke around the time of birth have been shown to have IQ in the normal or near normal range as a group; however a portion of children has consistently demonstrated cognitive delays. Utilizing both concurrent neuropsychological testing and pre-existing clinical data, we found that the factors that were predictive of initial performance on the spatial orientation task were age, gender, motor dexterity, the presence of Arterial Ischemic Stroke (AIS), and loss of grey matter volume (Chapter 3). Furthermore, the modest deficits in topographical orientation, seen in AIS patients, were ameliorated by further practice and were no longer seen after the second time playing the video game. In contrast, AIS, parental education and involvement of the dorsolateral prefrontal (DLPF) cortex were predictive factors for full-scale intelligence quotient (FSIQ). Loss of tissue volume predicted reduced verbal comprehension index (VCI) scores (Chapter 3). The relative preservation of spatial orientation, a multifaceted behaviour with a prolonged developmental course, would lend support to the hypothesis that injury within a network allows for better resiliency of that skill and may be an illustration that there is better recovery of an ability if injury occurs before that proficiency has fully matured.
Description
Keywords
Neuroscience, Human Development, Psychology--Cognitive, Psychology--Developmental
Citation
Murias, K. (2016). The Development of Spatial Orientation in Children After Perinatal Stroke (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28062