When they circulate in a public place, the elders use a strategy of avoidance of the pedestrians different from that of the young people, demonstrates a team of Laval University following experiments in a virtual environment. The slower reaction time to adjust their movement might lead to unfortunate consequences.
“Our results suggest that older people need more time to analyze the visual information they collect. Consequently, their attention is diverted from obstacles that might be in their way. In older people who have mobility or balance problems, this avoidance strategy might increase the risk of hitting an object or making a false step resulting in a fall”, summarizes the professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University. Laval and researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Research in Rehabilitation and Social Integration (Cirris) of the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale, Bradford McFadyen.
To arrive at these results, the team studied the circumvention strategies of 14 young people aged 24 on average and 14 people over 70 years old. The participants circulated in a virtual reality environment representing a shopping mall.
“We asked them to walk at a normal pace towards a food counter. During the journey, a virtual pedestrian appeared in their field of vision and walked towards them. Participants had to walk around it,” says Professor McFadyen.
During the tests, the research team measured, among other things, the observation time of the virtual pedestrian, the place where the participants were looking, the pedestrian-virtual pedestrian distance when the bypass was initiated and the minimum distance bypass.
Their results revealed that older adults:
- look at the virtual pedestrian 70% of the time, compared to 50% for young people;
- spend half as much time as young people looking at the environment;
- spend twice as much time as young people observing the virtual pedestrian’s legs;
- begin the bypass later when they are 1 m closer to the virtual pedestrian.
When the virtual pedestrian moved without moving limbs, members of both groups began to walk around earlier, but the difference was more marked in older people. “This indicates that the movements of the limbs of the virtual pedestrian are used to plan the bypass. When deprived of this information, participants, especially older people, are more cautious,” says Professor McFadyen.
To improve the avoidance strategy of the elderly and prevent accidents, Professor McFadyen points out that the virtual environment used in the study might be used
as a training tool for people with reduced mobility due to age or health issues such as stroke. This study was published in the scientific journal Human Movement Science. The signatories are Félix Fiset and Bradford McFadyen, from Université Laval, and Anouk Lamontagne, from McGill University.
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Public Relations and Protocol Team
Laval University
Article from the CIRRIS website