MEASUREMENT SYSTEM FOR DELAY-TIME OF GAIT EVENT DUE TO A DUAL-TASK DURING WALKING

摘要

During walking, attuning the heel contact to the external cueing is attentional and physical demanding. Based on this point of view, this is a preliminary study conducted for identifying the temporal accuracy of subjects for rhythmic auditory cueing, and to identify the balancing ability of the elderly based on this information. A measurement system was constructed to measure the motion delay time for the given rhythm and a pilot gait experiment was conducted for young adults while performing a cognitive dual task. The system consisted of a metronome and an accelerometer sensor measurement unit and is implemented as a program using LabVIEW. This pilot gait experiment measured individual delay times in 15 healthy adults in their 20s under two conditions: metronome walking (MET) and metronome walking with backward counting (MET+BC). Consequently, the delay time of MET and MET+BC conditions was 128.8±29.0msec and 200.2±37.0msec, respectively (p<0.05). Further experiments with the elderly will be needed to confirm whether such delay time can be used as an indicator for balancing ability.