A Parent-Based Intervention Program for Training Prospective Control Skills in Children

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Abstract

A key challenge for the developing perception-action system is learning how to exert prospective control over decisions and actions. One way children can learn is by practicing perception-action tasks with older, more experienced individuals. Prior research on joint parent-child road crossing in a virtual environment showed that parents’ spontaneous use of a prospective gap communication strategy predicted tighter timing of entry and greater time to spare for children (O’Neal et al., 2020). By alerting the child to a crossable gap prior to its arrival at the intersection, parents gave children more time to prepare their movements. However, this strategy was used only 30% of the time. The goal of this study was to test whether training parents to use a prospective gap communication strategy results in better road-crossing performance not only when children are crossing a virtual road with the parent, but also when they subsequently cross alone.
Parents and their 6- to 7-year-old children were randomly assigned to the intervention (N=11) or the control condition (N=10). (Data collection has been resumed and will be completed by February.) Parents in both conditions first practiced crossing the road without their child. During the practice, parents in the intervention condition received a short demonstration of the prospective gap communication strategy. Parents and children then crossed the virtual road together 20 times (Figure 1). Finally, children crossed the road 12 times alone (without the parent in the room). We measured gap selection and movement timing (i.e., timing of entry relative to the lead car in the gap, time to spare relative to the tail car in the gap).
Even with this small sample, we found that parents in the intervention group (M=0.84, SD=0.364) were significantly more likely to use the prospective gap communication strategy compared to parents in the control group (M=0.38, SD=0.49), t (18)=4.52, p<.001. As expected, children in the intervention group had tighter timing of entry and more time to spare when crossing with the parent, although these differences were not significant. Mixed-effects linear regression analyses indicated that children in the intervention condition had an estimated .14s decrease in timing of entry and a .11s increase in time to spare.

We also examined whether children in the intervention group exhibited better road-crossing performance than children in the control group when they crossed the road alone afterwards. As expected, children preferred larger over smaller gaps, with 7.96 increased odds of accepting a gap with each .5s increase in gap size. There were no condition differences in gap choices. However, children in the intervention condition had an estimated .14s decrease in timing of entry, t(18)=-1.40, p=0.181, and a .39s increase in time to spare, t(18)=3.04, p=0.01 (Figure 2).

These findings suggest that our parent-targeted intervention impacted children’s prospective control over movement timing both when crossing with the parent and when subsequently crossing alone. Over time, repeated experiences with practicing prospective control with a parent may lead to long-term changes in children’s prospective control in safety-critical perception-action tasks like road crossing.

Authors

• Nam-yoon Kim, University of Iowa
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth E O'Neal, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica K Flathau, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hanxi Tang, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lakshmi Subramanian, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joseph Kearney, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jodie Plumert, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author