Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America.
School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2018 Apr 9;13(4):e0195106. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195106. eCollection 2018.
The need to complete multiple tasks concurrently is a common occurrence both daily life and in occupational activities, which can often include simultaneous cognitive and physical demands. As one example, there is increasing availability of head-worn display technologies that can be employed when a user is mobile (e.g., while walking). This new method of information presentation may, however, introduce risks of adverse outcomes such as a decrement to gait performance. The goal of this study was thus to quantify the effects of a head-worn display (i.e., smart glasses) on motor variability during gait and to compare these effects with those of other common information displays (i.e., smartphone and paper-based system). Twenty participants completed four walking conditions, as a single task and in three dual-task conditions (three information displays). In the dual-task conditions, the information display was used to present several cognitive tasks. Three different measures were used to quantify variability in gait parameters for each walking condition (using the cycle-to-cycle standard deviation, sample entropy, and the "goal-equivalent manifold" approach). Our results indicated that participants used less adaptable gait strategies in dual-task walking using the paper-based system and smartphone conditions compared with single-task walking. Gait performance, however, was less affected during dual-task walking with the smart glasses. We conclude that the risk of an adverse gait event (e.g., a fall) in head-down walking conditions (i.e., the paper-based system and smartphone conditions) were higher than in single-task walking, and that head-worn displays might help reduce the risk of such events during dual-task gait conditions.
同时完成多项任务是日常生活和职业活动中的常见现象，这些任务通常同时包括认知和身体需求。例如，越来越多的头戴式显示技术可在用户移动时使用（例如，行走时）。这种新的信息呈现方式可能会带来不良后果的风险，例如步态性能下降。因此，本研究的目的是量化头戴式显示器（即智能眼镜）对步态运动变异性的影响，并将这些影响与其他常见信息显示器（即智能手机和基于纸张的系统）进行比较。二十名参与者完成了四项行走条件，即单一任务和三种双任务条件（三种信息显示器）。在双任务条件下，信息显示器用于呈现几个认知任务。使用三种不同的测量方法来量化每个行走条件下步态参数的变异性（使用周期到周期标准差、样本熵和“目标等效流形”方法）。我们的结果表明，与单一任务行走相比，参与者在使用基于纸张的系统和智能手机条件下进行双任务行走时使用的适应性步态策略较少。然而，在使用智能眼镜进行双任务行走时，步态性能受影响较小。我们得出的结论是，在低头行走条件下（即基于纸张的系统和智能手机条件）发生不良步态事件（例如跌倒）的风险高于单一任务行走，而头戴式显示器可能有助于降低双任务行走条件下发生此类事件的风险。
