Visual perception of verticality and horizontality among elderly fallers.

Patients who had suffered repeated falls or a single fall which led to hospitalization were tested for errors in visual perception of the verticality or horizontality of a rod presented on a video screen. Fallers had significantly greater average error scores than nonfallers. Fallers were more likely to be elderly or hemiplegic, and these conditions were also associated with elevated error scores. However, when age or hemiplegia was removed as a factor in the analysis, perceptual errors were still significantly greater in fallers than in nonfallers.