Augmented feedback for powered wheelchair training in a virtual environment.
Catherine Bigras, Dahlia Kairy, Philippe S Archambault
PMID 30658668WHAT IT FOUND
Adding augmented feedback to powered wheelchair simulator training did not improve learning or retention compared with no feedback.
Simulator training itself made healthy adults faster in virtual and real driving. Feedback helped speed and accuracy during training.
Key findings
01No significant group differences were found for virtual task completion time, virtual collisions, or real task completion time.
02Simulator training improved virtual test time from 90 seconds at baseline to seven seconds faster after training and eight seconds faster two days later, and improved real driving time by 7.5 seconds two days after training.
03The feedback group showed a significant speed and accuracy change from baseline to acquisition and during training, while the control group did not.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The participants were healthy right-handed adults with no powered wheelchair experience, not the people who would typically need powered wheelchair training. The virtual environment was a non-immersive desktop simulator, not a head-mounted or moving-platform system. The sample was small, so the authors could not examine whether feedback helps some people more than others. Three participants did not complete the real driving task because of technical problems with the powered wheelchair. The control group had better baseline performance than the feedback group, which may have reduced the chance of detecting a feedback benefit. The test task may have been too easy for young, university-educated adults. Only task time and collisions were measured, not path error, smoothness, or joystick control.
Declared interests
The supplied text reports funding by AGE-WELL; no additional conflict-of-interest declaration is provided.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that adding augmented feedback to powered wheelchair simulator training improves long-term learning for powered wheelchair users. The study used healthy novices, and the group comparison for task time and collisions was not significant; the feedback benefit was limited to speed and accuracy patterns during training.