Abstract
The purpose of this study was to understand the influence of various information acquisition strategies on foot proprioception and obstacle avoidance in people with low vision. Ten adult males (41.0 ± 7.1 years) with pigmentary retinal degeneration were recruited for this study. Participants acquired obstacle information (obstacle height: 4 cm and 15 cm) through three different strategies, namely, front (A), downward (B), and tactile (C). Subsequently, the participants performed two different tasks; Task 1: After identification of the obstacles, the participants reproduced the obstacle height by lifting their foot while standing still (10 times). Task 2: Following the acquisition of the obstacle information through conditions B and C, participants performed obstacle step-over from a standing position. In task 1, condition B showed significantly higher toe-rise and coefficient of variance in toe-rise (p < 0.05) than in conditions A and C, which both displayed similar toe-rise. Likewise, in task 2, the highest points of the leading and trailing feet while stepping over the obstacle were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in condition B than in condition C. Additionally, the coefficient of effort in condition B was significantly larger (p < 0.05) than that of condition C. These results suggest that differences in information acquisition strategies have an impact on the foot trajectory during obstacle step-over. Out of the three methods used in this study, information acquisition through the tactile sense may be the best obstacle avoidance feedback method for people with low vision.
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This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 15K16413.
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Uno, T., Loh, P.Y., Muraki, S. (2019). The Influence of Information Acquisition Strategies on Foot Proprioception and Obstacle Avoidance Pattern in People with Low Vision. In: Bagnara, S., Tartaglia, R., Albolino, S., Alexander, T., Fujita, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 819. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96089-0_86
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