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Introduction
The movement we analyzed was to balance on one leg and alternate hands touched to our subjects noses. Our subjects ages 9, 21, and 60 were all read the following description “The task is to touch your hand to your nose from a completely out stretched position as quickly and accurately as possible starting with the right hand then alternating with the left. You are to do this while standing on one leg, starting with the right leg then the left. You will do this task for a minute. At 30 seconds we will ask you to switch legs. We will give you ten second warning for when it is time to switch legs then count down 3, 2 1.” The results will be further discussed below.
We chose to analyze this movement because it is a relatively simply movement that involves analyzing subjects ability to follow directions and focus on upper and lower body muscles, balance, both gross and fine motor movement, and cognitive load. This duel task movement requires the subjects to perform two tasks simultaneously making it applicable to everyday life.
Caitlin Millham
Shylayne Davidson
Darbi Aitchison
Larissa McKinlay
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Late Childhood
This participant is a 9 year old female who partakes in a variety of sports and physical activity regularly.
Throughout the task, the individual started with full arm extension and then quickly showed a failure to fully extend her arms while moving them to and from and her nose. In the beginning, before the recording started, she looked to her mother and the recorder for reassurance on what to do, even after hearing the directions. This could be related to children’s information-processing skills, where they tend to remember and acquire less information than an adult (Dempster, 1981). Throughout the task, her eyes were shifting to different people in the room (her mother, brother and the recorder) suggesting a possible lack of focus. This participant showed drive for speed and getting as many nose touches in as possible. This may be the reason as to why we see her overshooting her finger past her nose; lack of arm extension; her head moving towards her finger, versus her finger coming all the way to her nose; upper body sway; and inconsistent speed of her arm movements (speeding up and slowing down). All of these factors may have also been influenced by the individual’s limited capacity of attention (Brown, Sleik, Polych, & Gage, 2002). By asking her to do a secondary task (arm movements in addition to a one-leg balance) she likely experienced interference of performance on the arm movements, due to prioritizing her postural control (Brown et al., 2002). However, we saw interference in the performance of both the primary and secondary tasks suggesting the individual tried to equalize her priorities but wasn’t fully capable of spreading her attention to both tasks.
Her balance was mediocre showing a fair amount of upper body sway and one complete loss of balance (at 14 seconds on her right foot), resulting in her touching down with her left toes to rebalance. This isn’t that surprising because one’s balance function does not usually reach adult level until the age of 12 and therefore, children often experience higher sway velocity than adults (Hsu, Kuan, & Young, 2009). It is common to see children have less balance function than adults because of the constantly changing biomechanics of the growing body (Hsu et al., 2009). When the participant lost her balance, she used ankle strategy to re-stabilize herself. This is expected as the ankle strategy is a lower-energy correction compared to the hip strategy and is a safe strategy, in terms of postural control, for younger generations (Lacour, Bernard-Demanze, & Dumitrescu, 2008).
Taking into account all the factors mentioned, her overall accuracy of the task as a whole would be seen as quite low, but her accuracy in regards to bringing her finger to her nose was high at 95.7% with 133 touches in 1 minutes.
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Young Adult
This female participant is in early adulthood, age 21, she participates regularly in physical activity, and maintains an involved post-secondary academic life.
To begin, she started with both feet planted on the ground and her arms by her side. She completed 72 nose touches throughout the entire one minute task, with more being completed during the second 30 second interval. Throughout the whole task, her arms remained perpendicular to her body reaching full extension between each and every nose touch with minimal postural instability. For our participants’ age category and the task presented, it was expected that she should attempt to balance both the task and postural priority in an attempt to maintain optimal performance for both components (Brown et al., 2002).
The increase in nose touches during the second half of the task translated to a speed increase and could be accounted for by the learning effect (Kantak, Zahedi & McGrath, 2017). However, it is worth mentioning that the increased speed of the second half of the task resulted in a minor discrepancy in accuracy; 2 of 40 nose touches were noticeably off target, making her accuracy for finger to nose 95% for the whole task. This accuracy versus speed components does not relate to research surrounding task prioritization (Kantak et al., 2017). Research suggests that individuals prioritize speed first when executing a new action, then become more accurate with experience and exposure; demonstrating improvements in the speed-accuracy trade-off (Kantak et al., 2017). This is contrary to our participant, who began by demonstrating a priority for accuracy before transitioning to prioritize speed by the end of the one minute task.
Throughout the entire minute of recorded performance there is very little observable postural sway with the majority of corrections being done via an ankle strategy; common for young adults experiencing small perturbations (Brown et al., 2002; Horak, 2006). Minimal head rotation, to aid in connecting the fingers and nose, was used, with gaze maintaining a straight ahead view. Additionally, despite the participant being in a public environment surrounded by peers, there was no conversation or noise was made by the participant. The environment surrounding the participant was a public lobby with peers observing and commenting on the task execution. The environment and characteristics of the individual likely enhanced the execution of the task; being a lifelong athlete she is highly practiced and motivated to perform well (Clark, 2005). It is also worth noting that she was executing the task in a highly stimulating environment; however, according to Brown et al. (2002), this may actually have been a benefit to her. It was found that for young adults, ages 19-25, complex tasks including a postural stability component performed better in situations with increased stimulation (Brown et al., 2002).
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Older Adult
This participant is a 60-year-old highly physically active female. She works slightly less than full time mostly sitting at a desk as a radiologist. The participant completed the task in a quiet living room on hard floor. Throughout the task, she made 52 touches to her nose with an accuracy of 100%. Based on this high accuracy and relatively low speed compared to the younger participants, she seemed to prioritize accuracy and postural control over speed. This finding is in line with the findings of Brown et al. (2002). Brown et al. (2002) found, like this participant, when older adults were in a posturally unstable position, their main priority was maintaining control of posture over the performance of a secondary task in a dual-task paradigm. She listened to and followed instructions well, indicating her superior ability in information-processing skills over the child. This is supported by Dempster (1981), who found adults outperformed children in information processing tasks. Older adults experience a decline in information processing (West & Crook, 1990). However, it seems she has not yet experienced a sufficient decline which is supported by West and Crook (1990) who found an adult’s decline in information processing does not occur until age 60. She maintained focus almost throughout the entire task, as indicated by her neutral facial expression and steady straightforward gaze. At 12s however, she lost her focus after laughing. This loss of focus resulted in her she losing her balance slightly. This loss of balance after laughing may be due to limited capacity theory. A study by Huxhold, Li, Schmiedek and Lindenberger (2006) found the attentional capacity of older adults is more limited than young adults and once an individual’s attentional capacity is sufficiently taxed is a detriment on postural control observed. It is possible, her attention capacity allowed her to perform the dual task but when laughing took part of attentional capacity she was no longer able to maintain postural control. She corrects her slight loss of balance by using the ankle strategy. Her use of the ankle strategy is contrary to what is expected of older adults. A review by Lacour et al. (2008) concludes that the hip strategy is the primary strategy used by older adults to avoid falls, as it is safer because it maintains the person’s centre of gravity inside their base of support. Possibly, her use of the ankle strategy rather than the hip strategy is explained by her relatively young age compared to most of the older adults assessed in the Lacour et al. (2008) review and her high physical activity level. Her transition from the right leg to the left leg is controlled. After making this transition, she pauses and returns her arms to the neutral fully outstretched position before continuing the secondary task.
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Comparison
When comparing all three subjects there were a couple of factors that stood out to us. The young adult and older adult maintained a straight forward gaze. Whereas, the young child shifted her gaze many times to look at her mother, brother, and the recorder. The young child prioritized speed and getting the greatest number of nose touches, versus the young adult and old adult, who prioritized accuracy of touches and postural control. We noticed that when the young child lost balance she still continued to rapidly touch her nose. Compared to the older adult, who paused the secondary task (nose touches) to maintain stability before continuing. This suggests the child was prioritizing the secondary task, whereas the older adult was prioritizing her postural control, as is inline with the findings of Brown et al. (2002). All three subjects were read the same directions except for our early adulthood participant, who helped develop the task so listening and comprehension wasn’t a factor. The young child only really listened to the beginning description “the task is to touch your hand to your nose” whereas the older adult followed the directions accurately by “completely stretching” her arm out and maintaining balance. When comparing recovery strategies, the child, as mentioned earlier, continues with the nose touches even when unbalanced. She then taps her left toe to regain balance. The young and older adults we analyzed showed very little imbalances and postural sway. Our task was a funny looking task, we found it interesting that all three subjects had a laugh at some point during the minute. The laughing began around the halfway point (30 seconds) once the subject realized what they were doing. The laughing often lead to imbalance and our subjects needing to regain balance and focus.
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References
Brown, L. A., Sleik, R. J., Polych, M. A., & Gage, W. H. (2002).Is the prioritization of postural control altered in conditions of postural threat in younger and older adults? The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 57(12), M785–M792.
Clark, J. E. (2005). From the beginning: A developmental perspective on movement and mobility, Quest, 57(1), 37-45.
Dempster, F. N. (1981). Memory span: Sources of individual and developmental differences. Psychological Bulletin, 89(1), 63-100.
Horak, F. B. (2006). Postural orientation and equilibrium: what do we need to know about neural control of balance to prevent falls?. Age and ageing, 35(S2), ii7-ii11
Hsu, Y., Kuan, C., & Young, Y. (2009). Assessing the development of balance function in children using stabilometry. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 73(5), 737-740.
Huxhold, O., Li, S. C., Schmiedek, F., & Lindenberger, U. (2006). Dual-tasking postural control: Aging and the effects of cognitive demand in conjunction with focus of attention. Brain Research Bulletin, 69(3), 294–305.
Kantak, S. S., Zahedi, N., & McGrath, R. (2017). Complex skill training transfers to improved performance and control of simpler tasks after stroke. Physical Therapy, 97(7), 718-728.
Lacour, M., Bernard-Demanze, L., & Dumitrescu, M. (2008). Posture control, aging, and attention resources: Models and posture-analysis methods. Neurophysiologie Clinique, 38(6), 411–421.
West, R. L., & Crook, T. H. (1990). Age differences in everyday memory: laboratory analogues of telephone number recall. Psychology and Aging, 5(4), 520–529. https://doi.org/10.1037//0882-7974.5.4.520
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