Distinct clusters of movement entropy in children’s exploration of a virtual reality balance beam

= 58) whole-body joint kinematics as they freely explored a balance beam in a virtual reality playground. Specifically, we used exploratory cluster analysis to examine the discriminatory capability of utilising joint-specific sample entropy as a window into individual differences in movement coordination that emerged from children's exploration of the constraints embedded in the virtual task. Among the results, three clusters of children with distinct profiles of movement variability emerged, all of which showed heterogeneous levels of repeatability in joint movements in combination with the level of spatiotemporal exploration on the balance beam that could not be explained by between-cluster differences in age and gender distributions. Those findings suggest that entropy from whole-body movements can be used to cluster children into distinct groups with different profiles regarding the structure of movement variability, which can inform new understandings and the development of gross motor competence assessments for children.