Children's risk assessment in street crossing using virtual reality.

INTRODUCTION: Crossing streets represents a risky task for children where they have to assess both the probability and harm severity of being hit by a vehicle. To cross streets safely, children must perceive and interpret the traffic environment and scale their movements to the flow of traffic. Their ability to gather information about the surrounding environment through visual search strategies is essential in this process. This study aimed to explore children's street crossing behaviors and to identify successful risk-assessment strategies. METHOD: Virtual reality (VR) with built-in eye tracking was used for this investigation; 55 children between 7 and 10 years old completed six street crossing tasks with varying complexity and difficulty. RESULTS: Varying competencies in street crossing were demonstrated among the children. Those who crossed safely looked to the left and right more often to check for traffic and spent more time assessing the traffic environment by following oncoming vehicles with their gaze before crossing than those who crossed dangerously. No apparent differences between children who crossed safely and those who crossed dangerously were found while crossing. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that dangerous street crossings were, on different levels, related to assessment time before crossing, visual search strategies during assessment time, and the tasks harm severity and probability risk. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Future research could suggestively include indicators such as assessment time and visual search strategies, and tasks could discern harm severity and probability risk. These indicators might also be considered for training programs aiming to enhance children's pedestrian safety.

Age, sex, sensation-seeking, and road-crossing: How does risk context impact children's street-crossing?

OBJECTIVE: Child pedestrian injuries are a significant public health problem, largely because children have underdeveloped cognitive-perceptual capacity to judge traffic unsupervised. This study used a virtual reality (VR) environment to examine the impact of children's age, as well as sex and sensation-seeking personality, on pedestrian behavior in different risk contexts. METHODS: 405 Norwegian children (7-10-year-olds) engaged in street-crossing scenarios within a VR environment. Children crossed a bicycle path and urban roadway six times, each with increasing density and complexity of traffic. Hits and near hits were recorded. Self-reported sensation-seeking personality was assessed. RESULTS: Children were more likely to experience crashes in the tasks that offered higher probability risk. Overall, 106 children crossed safely in all tasks. Dangerous crossings were associated with male sex, higher thrill and intensity seeking personality, and denser traffic. Age was not related to any traffic safety outcomes. CONCLUSION: As expected, children were struck by vehicles more often in complex traffic contexts than in less complex ones. The results support previous findings and suggest that boys and sensation seekers have elevated risk of pedestrian injury, and that individual differences in children, rather than age alone, must be considered when determining if children are capable of safely negotiating traffic unsupervised.

Psychometric Properties of the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence for Young Norwegian Children.

The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence (PMSC) for young Norwegian children, a scale that is aligned with skills assessed in the Test of Gross Motor Development- Third Edition. We used convenience sampling to recruit 396 Norwegian-speaking children (7-10-year-olds) who completed the PMSC. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed factorial validity for the proposed three-factor model of the PMSC, encompassing measures of self-perceived ball, locomotor, and active play competence. Internal item consistency coefficients of these sub-scales were acceptable, and subsequent measurement invariant analysis found a gender difference such that boys rated their competence higher than girls in running, jumping forward, hitting a ball (racket), kicking, throwing a ball and rope climbing, while girls rated themselves higher, compared to boys, in galloping and skating/blading. Furthermore, there was a slightly better model fit for boys than for girls. Several items were significantly related to children's age, and the three-factor model exhibited differential age related factor mean differences across older and younger children. Overall, we found the PMSC to have acceptable psychometric properties for confident use in assessing perceived motor competence among 7-10-year-old Norwegian children, though we observed age and gender differences in children's responses that warrant careful interpretation of results and further research investigation.

Psychometric properties of the Adolescent Motor Competence Questionnaire for Norwegian adolescents.

The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Adolescent Motor Competence Questionnaire (AMCQ) for Norwegian adolescents. To this end, a sample of 349 Norwegian-speaking adolescents (13-16 years old) were recruited and completed the AMCQ. Initial results showed that confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) did not indicate statistical support for previous statistical models reported in the literature. Further analysis indicated factorial validity for a novel three-factor model identified through exploratory factor analysis, encompassing measures of fine motor skill (α = 0.65), gross motor skill (α = 0.74), and activities of daily living (ADL; α = 0.79) with acceptable internal consistency coefficients. Subsequent analysis indicated indices of measurement invariance in the study sample, as males rated their competence higher compared to females in 19 of the 27 items, and better model fit was obtained for the female adolescents. Strong invariance was tenable, and no factor mean differences were found across older and younger adolescents or across BMI scores. Overall results thus suggested that the AMCQ has acceptable psychometric properties and can be confidently used in further work with perceived motor competence in Norwegian 13-16 years-old adolescents.

Assessment of psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the sensation seeking scale for children in a Norwegian sample.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of a Norwegian translation of the Sensation Seeking Scale for Children (SSSC), designed for children between 7 and 12 years of age. Methods: A sample of 393 children (7-10 years old) were recruited to participate in the study. The SSSC was administered through interviews with each child, wherein their responses to the SSSC questionnaire were recorded on a tablet. Results: Analysis of internal consistency reliability did not show acceptable reliability for all subscales, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the Thrill Seeking and Behavioral Intensity subscales were associated and somewhat overlapping, while Behavioral Inhibition appeared as a single factor. A further explanatory factor analysis (EFA) revealed a two-factor solution. CFA of the two-factor solution resulted in the removal of some items in both factors due to low factor loadings. The final factors resulting from this analysis were Thrill and Intensity Seeking (13 items) and Behavioral Inhibition (7 items). The results also show that boys scored higher than girls on Thrill and Intensity Seeking while girls scored higher than boys on Behavioral Inhibition. Furthermore, age was positively associated with both subscales, meaning that older children tended to score higher. Discussion: The results in this study suggest that measures of children's sensation seeking might be sensitive to cultural contexts and that, at least in a Norwegian population, a two-factor solution of the SSSC is recommended.

Distinct clusters of movement entropy in children's exploration of a virtual reality balance beam.

Although assessing motor competence is vital to advancing current understandings of motor development and its significance in various fields, no consensus exists on how the construct should be operationalised and measured. Existing approaches to assessing motor competence in children typically involve applying qualitative and/or quantitative scoring procedures in which children's performance is evaluated according to certain levels of assessment-specific task performance dependent upon predefined sets of instructions and procedures. Building upon ecological dynamics as a framework, different levels of motor competence can be identified in children's attempts to coordinate their degrees of freedom while trying to complete the interactive task and environmental constraints. Given the dynamic, nonlinear features of that coordinating process, assessments need to consider the inherit structure of inter- and intra-individual variability in patterns of movement. Against that background, we investigated 7-10-year-old children's (n = 58) whole-body joint kinematics as they freely explored a balance beam in a virtual reality playground. Specifically, we used exploratory cluster analysis to examine the discriminatory capability of utilising joint-specific sample entropy as a window into individual differences in movement coordination that emerged from children's exploration of the constraints embedded in the virtual task. Among the results, three clusters of children with distinct profiles of movement variability emerged, all of which showed heterogeneous levels of repeatability in joint movements in combination with the level of spatiotemporal exploration on the balance beam that could not be explained by between-cluster differences in age and gender distributions. Those findings suggest that entropy from whole-body movements can be used to cluster children into distinct groups with different profiles regarding the structure of movement variability, which can inform new understandings and the development of gross motor competence assessments for children.

Virtual Risk Management-Exploring Effects of Childhood Risk Experiences through Innovative Methods (ViRMa) for Primary School Children in Norway: Study Protocol for the ViRMa Project.

BACKGROUND: Research indicates that risky play benefits children's risk assessment and risk management skills and offers several positive health effects such as resilience, social skills, physical activity, well-being, and involvement. There are also indications that the lack of risky play and autonomy increases the likelihood of anxiety. Despite its well-documented importance, and the willingness of children to engage in risky play, this type of play is increasingly restricted. Assessing long-term effects of risky play has been problematic because of ethical issues with conducting studies designed to allow or encourage children to take physical risks with the potential of injury. OBJECTIVE: The Virtual Risk Management project aims to examine children's development of risk management skills through risky play. To accomplish this, the project aims to use and validate newly developed and ethically appropriate data collection tools such as virtual reality, eye tracking, and motion capturing, and to provide insight into how children assess and handle risk situations and how children's past risky play experiences are associated with their risk management. METHODS: We will recruit 500 children aged 7-10 years and their parents from primary schools in Norway. Children's risk management will be measured through data concerning their risk assessment, risk willingness, and risk handling when completing a number of tasks in 3 categories of virtual reality scenarios: street crossing, river crossing, and playing on playground equipment. The children will move around physically in a large space while conducting the tasks and wear 17 motion-capturing sensors that will measure their movements to analyze motor skills. We will also collect data on children's perceived motor competence and their sensation-seeking personality. To obtain data on children's risk experiences, parents will complete questionnaires on their parental style and risk tolerance, as well as information about the child's practical risk experience. RESULTS: Four schools have been recruited to participate in data collection. The recruitment of children and parents for this study started in December 2022, and as of April 2023, a total of 433 parents have consented for their children to participate. CONCLUSIONS: The Virtual Risk Management project will increase our understanding of how children's characteristics, upbringing, and previous experiences influence their learning and ability to handle challenges. Through development and use of cutting-edge technology and previously developed measures to describe aspects of the children's past experiences, this project addresses crucial topics related to children's health and development. Such knowledge may guide pedagogical questions and the development of educational, injury prevention, and other health-related interventions, and reveal essential areas for focus in future studies. It may also impact how risk is addressed in crucial societal institutions such as the family, early childhood education, and schools. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/45857.

Associations between Children's Risky Play and ECEC Outdoor Play Spaces and Materials.

Children spend a large amount of time each day in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions, and the ECEC play environments are important for children's play opportunities. This includes children's opportunities to engage in risky play. This study examined the relationship between the outdoor play environment and the occurrence of children's risky play in ECEC institutions. Children (n = 80) were observed in two-minute sequences during periods of the day when they were free to choose what to do. The data consists of 935 randomly recorded two-minute videos, which were coded second by second for several categories of risky play as well as where and with what materials the play occurred. Results revealed that risky play (all categories in total) was positively associated with fixed equipment for functional play, nature and other fixed structures, while analysis of play materials showed that risky play was positively associated with wheeled toys. The results can support practitioners in developing their outdoor areas to provide varied and exciting play opportunities.