LE3 .A278 2016

2016

Champod, Anne Sophie

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Psychology

Psychology

There is an unmet need for effective and standardized interventions for spatial neglect, which is a condition after stroke that makes it difficult for patients to attend to the left side of space. Prism adaptation (PA) is an experimental treatment for spatial neglect. Peg-the-Mole (PTM) is a game-like PA procedure developed to address the limitations of the typical PA procedure. The purpose of the present study was threefold: 1) to examine the effectiveness of PTM used on an iPad in inducing pointing after-effects in healthy participants, 2) to investigate if pointing after-effects generalize to a wheelchair manoeuvring task, 3) to examine if the magnitude of PA effects on wheelchair manoeuvringis influenced by the number of trained hand trajectories during PTM. It was found that PTM induced significant after-effects on both pointing tasks, which generalized to the wheelchair manoeuvring task. The number of trained hand trajectories did not influence the magnitude of PA effects on the wheelchair manoeuvring task. In the future, it is hoped that PTM will provide an opportunity for patients to complete their treatment in the comfort of their home.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1487