Perception and action in children with unilateral cerebral palsy

Perception and action are intertwined since action is a means to acquire perceptions (of space for example), and it is from perception that we are able to act on our environment. Children with cerebral palsy (CP) were born with reduced action capacity. Hence, with the first objective of this thesis we evaluated the effect of this action reduction on space perception in healthy and CP children. We showed that action reduction induced global and/or lateralized space perception deficits. Moreover, as a second aim, we improved action in healthy and CP children using action observation as motor priming. Therefore, this thesis highlighted the link between perception and action in healthy and CP children, in particular concerning action priming and space perception. Finally, we innovated in matter of diagnosis and rehabilitation for children with CP, in particular using robotic tools.