Multisensory and biomechanical influences on postural control in children.

• Older children (6 to 11 years old) showed a multisensory integration advantage compared to their younger counterparts (3 to 6 years old). • The relation between anthropometric parameters (e.g., height, leg length, weight) and posture revealed a shifting pattern across development. For younger children, these parameters were positively related to postural stability. This relation likely arises due to body size being an indexed of general motor skill and experience. • For older children, body size parameters were non-significantly related to postural stability. This non-significant relation between body size and posture for older children can be seen as a developmental transition from childlike to adultlike balance control. Children's ability to maintain balance requires effective integration of multisensory and biomechanical information. The current project examined the interaction between such sensory inputs, manipulating visual input (presence vs. absence), haptic (somatosensory) input (presence vs. absence of contact with a stable or unstable finger support surface), and biomechanical (sensorimotor) input (varying stance widths). Analyses of mean velocity of the center of pressure and the percentage stability gain highlighted the role of varying multisensory inputs in postural control. Developmentally, older children (6–11 years) showed a multisensory integration advantage compared with their younger counterparts (3–5.9 years), with the impact of varying sensory inputs more closely akin to that seen in adults. Subsequent analyses of the impact of anthropometric individual difference parameters (e.g., height, leg length, weight, areas of base of support) revealed a shifting pattern across development. For younger children, these parameters were positively related to postural stability across experimental conditions (i.e., increasing body size was related to increasing postural control). This pattern transitioned for older children, who showed a nonsignificant relation between body size and balance. Interestingly, because adults show a negative relation between anthropometric factors and stability (i.e., increasing body size is related to decreasing postural control), this shift for the older children can be seen as a developmental transition from child-like to adult-like balance control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]