No abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the effect of a physical rest-frame, habituation and age on simulator sickness in an advanced mobility scooter driving simulator. Twenty-six young and 34 older adults completed a total of 12 drives in an advanced mobility scooter driving simulator over two visits. A 2x2 crossover design was used to measure the effect of a rest frame that was added to the driving simulator on either the first or second visit. The Simulator Sickness Questionnaire was used to measure simulator sickness symptoms. A significant decrease in simulator sickness was observed between the first and the second visit. Older adults reported more severe simulator sickness symptoms compared to younger participants. No effect of rest-frame could be found. Habituation appears to be the most effective method to reduce simulator sickness in an advanced mobility scooter driving simulator. More research is needed to investigate simulator sickness in patient groups. Practitioner summary: Experiencing simulator sickness is a major problem across all types of simulators. The present experiment investigated the effect of a rest-frame, habituation and age on developing simulator sickness symptoms in an advanced mobility scooter driving simulator. Habituation appeared to be the most effective method to reduce simulator sickness.

Visual agnosia and Balint's syndrome are complex neurological disorders of the higher visual system that can have a remarkable impact on individuals' lives. Rehabilitation of these individuals is important to enable participation in everyday activities despite the impairment. However, the literature about the rehabilitation of these disorders is virtually silent. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to give an overview of available literature describing treatment approaches and their effectiveness with regard to these disorders. The search engines Psychinfo, Amed, and Medline were used, resulting in 22 articles meeting the criteria for inclusion. Only articles describing acquired disorders were considered. These articles revealed that there is some information available on the major subtypes of visual agnosia as well as on Balint's syndrome which practising clinicians can consult for guidance. With regard to the type of rehabilitation, compensatory strategies have proven to be beneficial in most of the cases. Restorative training on the other hand has produced mixed results. Concluding, although still scarce, a scientific foundation about the rehabilitation of visual agnosia and Balint's syndrome is evolving. The available approaches give valuable information that can be built upon in the future.

The present findings suggest that visually impaired individuals are able to learn to drive mobility scooters. Mobility scooter allocators should be aware that these individuals might need more training on certain elements of the driving task. Implications for rehabilitation Visual impairments do not necessarily lead to an inability to acquire mobility scooter driving skills. Individuals with peripheral field defects (especially in combination with reduced visual acuity) need more driving ability training compared to normal-sighted people - especially to accomplish reversing. Individual assessment of visually impaired people is recommended, since participants in this study showed a wide variation in ability to learn driving a mobility scooter.