Sport Research Centre, Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Research Centre of Health Sciences, School of Health and Society, University of Salford, Salford, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2019 Jun 20;14(6):e0218665. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218665. eCollection 2019.
Natural independent walking mostly occurs during infant´s everyday explorations of their home environment. Gait characteristics of infant walkers at different developmental stages exist in literature, however, data has been only collected in laboratory environments, which may reduce gait variability, therefore mask differences between developmental stages of natural gait. The aim of the study was to provide the first data set of temporal and functional gait characteristics of novice and improver infant walkers in familiar environment conditions in their home. We hypothesised that familiar environment conditions may effectively demonstrate natural gait characteristics and real differences in gait variables differing between 2 groups of developing infant walkers.
In a cross-sectional design; we used open-source videos of infants in their home environments: twenty videos of 10 novice (5 girls, 5 boys, 7-12 months) and 10 improver (4 girls, 6 boys, 8-13 months) walkers were chosen from an open-source website. 2-D video gait analysis was undertaken for these parameters: falls frequency, frequency of stops, gait cadence, and time of stance phase, swing phase, and double support. Between groups comparison for novice versus improver was investigated by Mann-Whitney U tests (p ≤ 0.05) with determination of effect size of Pearson r correlation.
Statistically significant differences between groups with large effect sizes were found for these parameters: falls frequency (p = 0.01, r = 0.56); cadence (p = 0.01, r = 0.57); stance phase duration of right leg (p < 0.01, r = 0.63); stance phase duration of left leg (p = 0.01, r = 0.56); and double support phase duration (p < 0.01, r = 0.69). Novices scored higher in comparison with improver walkers in all the parameters except cadence.
This study presents the first data set of functional and temporal gait parameters of novice and improver infant walkers in their home environments. As an addition to recent research, novice infants walk with lower cadence and higher falls frequency, stance phase time and double support in their familiar environments. With increasing experiences, infant´s cadence increases while the other parameters decrease.
自然独立行走主要发生在婴儿日常探索家庭环境的过程中。不同发育阶段婴儿行走者的步态特征在文献中已经存在，然而，数据仅在实验室环境中收集，这可能会降低步态的可变性，从而掩盖自然步态不同发育阶段之间的差异。本研究的目的是提供第一组在家庭熟悉环境条件下新手和提高者婴儿行走者的时间和功能步态特征数据集。我们假设熟悉的环境条件可以有效地展示自然步态特征，并真实地展示两组发育中的婴儿行走者之间的步态变量差异。
采用横断面设计；我们使用婴儿在家庭环境中的开源视频：从一个开源网站中选择了 20 个视频，其中 10 个是新手（5 个女孩，5 个男孩，7-12 个月），10 个是提高者（4 个女孩，6 个男孩，8-13 个月）。对这些参数进行二维视频步态分析：跌倒频率、停止频率、步频、站立相时间、摆动相时间和双支撑时间。通过曼-惠特尼 U 检验（p≤0.05）对新手与提高者之间的组间比较进行了研究，并确定了皮尔逊 r 相关的效应大小。
发现两组之间存在统计学显著差异，且具有较大的效应量：跌倒频率（p=0.01，r=0.56）；步频（p=0.01，r=0.57）；右腿站立相持续时间（p<0.01，r=0.63）；左腿站立相持续时间（p=0.01，r=0.56）；和双支撑阶段持续时间（p<0.01，r=0.69）。与提高者相比，新手在所有参数中得分更高，除了步频。
本研究首次提供了新手和提高者婴儿在家中环境下的功能和时间步态参数数据集。作为最近研究的补充，新手婴儿在熟悉的环境中以较低的步频和较高的跌倒频率、站立相时间和双支撑行走。随着经验的增加，婴儿的步频增加，而其他参数减少。
