Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
Gait Posture. 2010 Mar;31(3):295-9. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2009.11.008. Epub 2009 Dec 23.
We assessed age-related differences in adults in familiarization to treadmill walking within virtual environments (VE), and examined whether treadmill walking after familiarization resembles overground walking. Seventeen younger and 17 older adults walked at preferred speed on an overground walkway and afterwards walked at the same speed for 20 min on a treadmill coupled to a VE. A motion capture system was used to measure spatio-temporal gait parameters. On the treadmill, both younger and older adults initially displayed decreased step length and increased step width, cadence, and time in double support relative to overground walking. Except for time in double support, step characteristics approached overground walking-behavior with a negatively accelerated trend. After 15 min of treadmill walking, changes became minor corresponding to less than 1% deviations to individuals' overground walking. At the end of familiarization, average differences in step length, cadence, and double support relative to overground walking were reduced to less than 5 percent in both age groups. For step width, younger adults approximated overground walking after 20 min more closely than older adults, probably reflecting larger initial differences between treadmill and overground walking among older adults. We conclude (a) that 20 min of familiarization to treadmill walking in a VE are sufficient to reach stable walking patterns resembling those observed in overground walking, but that some differences between the two settings remain, especially in older adults; (b) that sufficient familiarization to the treadmill is needed to ascertain the validity and generalizability of comparisons between younger and older adults.
我们评估了成年人在熟悉虚拟现实环境（VE）中的跑步机行走方面的年龄相关差异，并研究了熟悉跑步机后是否类似于在地面上行走。17 名年轻和 17 名年长的成年人在地面步道上以自己的舒适速度行走，然后在与 VE 相连的跑步机上以相同的速度行走 20 分钟。使用运动捕捉系统来测量时空步态参数。在跑步机上，年轻和年长的成年人最初的步幅都比在地面上行走时短，步宽、步频和双支撑时间都增加了。除了双支撑时间外，步幅特征接近地面行走行为，呈负加速趋势。在跑步机上行走 15 分钟后，变化变得较小，对应于个人在地面行走行为的偏差小于 1%。在熟悉阶段结束时，年轻和年长成年人相对于地面行走的步长、步频和双支撑的平均差异减少到小于 5%。对于步宽，年轻成年人在 20 分钟后更接近地面行走，这可能反映了年长成年人在跑步机和地面行走之间的初始差异较大。我们得出结论：（a）在 VE 中进行 20 分钟的跑步机行走熟悉可以达到稳定的行走模式，类似于在地面上行走时观察到的模式，但两种设置之间仍存在一些差异，尤其是在年长成年人中；（b）需要足够的跑步机熟悉程度来确定年轻和年长成年人之间比较的有效性和普遍性。
