Abstract
Purpose
Landing involves a tuned anticipatory control to allow for soft and safe contact with the ground. Fearful situations are known to affect postural control strategies during standing, but it is still unclear how fear interferes with the control of a voluntary dynamic task requiring coordination between posture and movement.
Methods
Ground reaction forces, limb movements, physiological arousal, and perceived levels of confidence and fear of falling were recorded when hopping off a box to a platform situated 0.8 m above ground and 3.2 m above ground.
Results
Height induced a perceived threat as arousal was augmented by the elevated surface for all subjects. Threat induced by height modifies the way participants land, leading to a stiffer landing, as evidenced by an increased loading rate at touchdown during high threat conditions. Greater psychological and physiological changes are associated with greater changes in the control of landing: individuals that are less confident/more fearful appear to compensate for this stiffer landing, by slowing down their landing.
Conclusion
Threatening conditions induces a harder contact to the ground, but the strategy is dependent of the level of confidence/fear. Less confident/more fearful participants are more focused on coping strategy and adopt a more cautious behaviour.
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Abbreviations
- APSI:
-
Antero-Posterior Stability Index
- A V :
-
Vertical component of the acceleration of the center of mass of the body
- BW:
-
Body weight
- c2:
-
Mass-specific damping coefficient of the system, calculated during the second part of landing
- CoM:
-
Center of mass of the body
- EDA:
-
Electro dermal activity
- FV :
-
Vertical component of the ground reaction force
- k1:
-
Mass-specific overall stiffness of the spring-mass system, calculated during the first part of landing
- k2:
-
Mass-specific overall stiffness of the spring-mass system, calculated during the second part of landing
- S V :
-
Vertical displacement of the centre of mass of the body
- t AER :
-
Aerial phase
- TD:
-
Touchdown
- TO:
-
Take-off
- TTS:
-
Time to stabilization
- VSI:
-
Vertical Stability Index
- V V :
-
Vertical component of the velocity of the center of mass of the body
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Acknowledgements
Université catholique de Louvain (BE), Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique of Belgium (FNRS, BE), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, CA)
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by BS and MJL. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BS and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Communicated by Lori Ann Vallis.
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Appendix: Attention focus questionnaire, adapted from Johnson et al. (2019)
Appendix: Attention focus questionnaire, adapted from Johnson et al. (2019)
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Schepens, B., Luu, M.J. & Carpenter, M.G. Control of landing under conditions of height-induced threat. Eur J Appl Physiol 120, 1827–1839 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-020-04413-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-020-04413-6