Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States of America.
Department of Engineering, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Dec 2;16(12):e0260893. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260893. eCollection 2021.
Psychomotor change is a core symptom of depression and one of the criteria in diagnosing depressive disorders. Research suggests depressed individuals demonstrate deviations in gait, or walking, compared to non-depressed controls. However, studies are sparse, often limited to older adults and observational gait assessment. It is also unclear if gait changes are due to dysregulation of affect, a core feature of depression. The current study addressed this gap by investigating the relation between positive and negative affect, depressive symptom severity, and gait in young adults.
Using three-dimensional motion capture, gait parameters (velocity, stride length, and step time) were attained from 90 young adults during a task where they walked ten meters at their own pace overground in a laboratory for ten minutes. Self-report measures of mood and affect were collected.
On average, the study population reported high negative and low positive affect. Contrary to our hypotheses, hierarchical regressions demonstrated no significant associations between gait parameters and affective or depressive symptoms (ps>.05).
Our findings do not support a relation between affective symptoms and gait parameters. The results may indicate age-dependent gait pathology or that other symptoms of depression may influence gait more strongly than affect. They may also reflect an observational bias of gait changes in depressed young adults, one that is unsupported by objective data. Replication is warranted to further examine whether affective symptomology is embodied via gait differences in young adults.
精神运动变化是抑郁的核心症状之一，也是诊断抑郁障碍的标准之一。研究表明，与非抑郁对照组相比，抑郁个体的步态或行走存在偏差。然而，研究较少，且通常仅限于老年人和观察性步态评估。步态变化是否是由于抑郁的核心特征——情绪失调引起的也不清楚。本研究通过调查年轻人的积极和消极情绪、抑郁症状严重程度与步态之间的关系，填补了这一空白。
使用三维运动捕捉技术，在实验室中，90 名年轻人以自己的速度在地面上行走 10 米，持续十分钟，在此期间获得了步态参数（速度、步长和步时）。同时收集了情绪和情感的自我报告测量结果。
平均而言，研究人群报告了较高的负性情绪和较低的正性情绪。与我们的假设相反，分层回归显示步态参数与情感或抑郁症状之间没有显著关联（p>.05）。
我们的发现不支持情感症状与步态参数之间存在关系。结果可能表明年龄相关的步态病理，或者抑郁的其他症状可能比情绪更能影响步态。它们也可能反映了抑郁的年轻成年人中步态变化的观察性偏见，而这种偏见没有得到客观数据的支持。需要进行复制研究，以进一步检查情感症状是否通过年轻成年人的步态差异来体现。
