Faculty of Health, Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2023 Sep 14;18(9):e0284308. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284308. eCollection 2023.
Gait is a large component and indicator of health. Many factors affect gait including age, disease, and even mood disorders. Few studies have looked at the influence of emotional states on gait. This study aimed to investigate the influence of emotional states on walking performance to understand whether an emotional state may be an important factor to consider when evaluating gait. Thirty-six young adults were recruited (23F, 13M) and performed a neutral baseline condition of walking which included six passes of walking across an 8m walkway (a total of 48m of walking). Participants then completed 6 pseudo-randomized emotional state induction conditions while immersive 360-degree videos were used to induce the following emotional conditions: happiness, excitement, sadness, fear, and anger. Participants viewed the emotion elicitation videos using a virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD), then rated their emotional state using self-assessment manikins and walked (without the HMD) over a pressure sensor walkway. One-way repeated measures ANOVA and pairwise comparisons were used to examine differences in gait parameters across the emotional conditions. Participants walked with significantly reduced step length and speed during the sadness condition compared to the other emotional conditions and the neutral condition. Furthermore, participants adjusted the timing of their walking during the sadness condition and walked with significantly increased step, stance, and swing times compared to other emotional conditions, but not the neutral condition. Step time was significantly reduced during the conditions of excitement and fear compared to the neutral condition. Emotions may impact variety of gait parameters involving pace and rhythm, however have little influence on gait variability and postural control. These results indicate that perhaps the emotions of sadness and excitement should be taken into account as potential confounds for future gait analysis.
步态是健康的一个重要组成部分和指标。许多因素会影响步态，包括年龄、疾病，甚至情绪障碍。很少有研究关注情绪状态对步态的影响。本研究旨在调查情绪状态对行走表现的影响，以了解情绪状态是否可能是评估步态时需要考虑的一个重要因素。
招募了 36 名年轻成年人（23 名女性，13 名男性），并进行了中立的基线行走条件，包括在 8 米长的走道上行走六次（总共行走 48 米）。然后，参与者完成了 6 个伪随机情绪状态诱导条件，同时使用沉浸式 360 度视频诱导以下情绪条件：快乐、兴奋、悲伤、恐惧和愤怒。参与者使用虚拟现实头戴式显示器（HMD）观看情绪诱发视频，然后使用自我评估模拟人评估自己的情绪状态，并在压力传感器走道上行走（不使用 HMD）。使用单向重复测量方差分析和成对比较来检查情绪条件下步态参数的差异。
与其他情绪条件和中立条件相比，参与者在悲伤条件下行走时步长和速度明显减小。此外，与其他情绪条件相比，参与者在悲伤条件下调整了行走的时间，并且步幅、站立和摆动时间明显增加，但与中立条件相比则没有增加。与中立条件相比，兴奋和恐惧条件下的步时明显减少。
情绪可能会影响涉及步速和节奏的各种步态参数，但对步态变异性和姿势控制的影响很小。这些结果表明，悲伤和兴奋等情绪可能需要被视为未来步态分析的潜在混杂因素。
