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Interpersonal interactions for haptic guidance during balance exercises
Caregiver-patient interaction relies on interpersonal coordination during support provided by a therapist to a patient with impaired control of body balance. The purpose of this study was to investigate in a therapeutic context active and passive participant involvement during interpersonal support...
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Published in: | Gait & posture 2018-09, Vol.65, p.129 |
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Main Authors: | , , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | Caregiver-patient interaction relies on interpersonal coordination during support provided by a therapist to a patient with impaired control of body balance.
The purpose of this study was to investigate in a therapeutic context active and passive participant involvement during interpersonal support in balancing tasks of increasing sensorimotor difficulty.
Ten older adults stood in semi-tandem stance and received support from a physical therapist (PT) in two support conditions: 1) physical support provided by the PT to the participant's back via an instrumented handle affixed to a harness worn by the participant ("passive" interpersonal touch; IPT) or 2) support by PT and participant jointly holding a handle instrumented with a force-torque transducer while facing each other ("active" IPT). The postural stability of both support conditions was measured using the root-mean-square (RMS) of the Centre-of-Pressure velocity (RMS dCOP) in the antero-posterior (AP) and medio-lateral (ML) directions. Interpersonal postural coordination (IPC) was characterized in terms of cross-correlations between both individuals' sway fluctuations as well as the measured interaction forces.
Active involvement of the participant decreased the participant's postural variability to a greater extent, especially under challenging stance conditions, than receiving support passively. In the passive support condition, however, stronger in-phase IPC between both partners was observed in the antero-posterior direction, possibly caused by a more critical (visual or tactile) observation of participants' body sway dynamics by the therapist. In-phase cross-correlation time lags indicated that the therapist tended to respond to participants' body sway fluctuations in a reactive follower mode, which could indicate visual dominance affecting the therapist during the provision of haptic support.
Our paradigm implies that in balance rehabilitation more partnership-based methods promote greater postural steadiness. The implications of this finding with regard to motor learning and rehabilitation need to be investigated. |
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ISSN: | 1879-2219 |