Haptics as an aid to copying for people with Williams Syndrome

Figure copying is a complex visuo-motor skill that uses aspects of vision and memory to guide precisely directed action. Previous studies have shown that explicit visual training improves the copying abilities of young children. This study considers training in a haptic virtual environment as a method to improve copying abilities in people who show weak performance in such tasks, namely normally developing 4–5 year old children and adults with Williams Syndrome (WS). WS is a rare genetic disorder that results in severe impairment in visuospatial construction tasks, most obvious in copying (but not tracing) deficits. In simple copying tasks, training with a haptic device led to improvement in unassisted copying for both normally developing children and adults with WS. Improvement in copying ability for this pilot study demonstrates the potential effectiveness of haptics as a rehabilitation tool. Comparison of copying and tracing accuracy results also suggests that the copying errors seen in people with WS and 4–5 year old children stem from visuo-spatial deficits, and not solely from deficits in motor skills.