Gait & Posture
Volume 23, Issue 2 , Pages 173-179, February 2006

Variability of reciprocal aiming movements during standing: The effect of amplitude and frequency

  • Frédéric Danion

      Affiliations

    • UMR 6559 Mouvement et Perception, Université de la Méditerranée, CNRS, Faculté des Sciences du Sport, 163 avenue de Luminy, 13288 Marseille Cedex 09, France
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +33 04 91 17 22 78; fax: +33 04 91 17 22 52.
    • ,
  • Marcos Duarte

      Affiliations

    • Universidade de São Paulo, Escola de Educação Física e Esporte, São Paulo, Brasil
    • ,
  • Marc Grosjean

      Affiliations

    • Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Psychology, Munich, Germany

Received 2 July 2004; received in revised form 28 December 2004; accepted 20 January 2005. published online 03 March 2005.

Abstract 

This study investigated the variability of the center of pressure (COP) trajectory during voluntary whole-body oscillations. While standing upright on a force platform, eight subjects leaned forward and backward so as to perform reciprocal aiming movements with their COP at a prescribed frequency (F) and amplitude (A) using online visual feedback of their COP location. A total of 25 F–A combinations were tested for each subject (3<A<9cm, and 0.35<F<1.35Hz). Spatial and temporal variability of the COP was assessed by computing the standard deviation (SD) and coefficient of variation (CV) of the amplitude (trough to peak) and frequency (peak to peak) of the COP cycles within each trial, respectively. The results revealed that all variability indices depended on the prescribed F and A. Concerning the effect of spatial constraints on spatial variability, SD spatial increased as a function of A, while CV spatial decreased as function of A. A similar pattern was observed with respect to the effect of temporal constraints on temporal variability (SD temporal increased as a function of F, while CV temporal decreased). As for “cross-over” effects, there was an effect of F on spatial variability, such that SD spatial and CV spatial were minimal at 0.6Hz. For the “cross over” effect of A on temporal variability, both SD spatial and CV spatial decreased as a function of A. Across the experimental conditions, there were weak or no correlations between variability in the time and space domain. Comparisons with an earlier study on human gait (Danion F, Varraine E, Bonnard M, Pailhous J. Stride variability in human gait: the effect of stride frequency and stride length. Gait Posture 2003;18:69–77) suggest that the effects of spatial constraints are relatively task independent, whereas the effects of temporal constraints depend on the nature of the motor task that is performed.

Keywords: Human movement, Posture, Center of pressure, Variability, Amplitude, Frequency

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PII: S0966-6362(05)00014-7

doi:10.1016/j.gaitpost.2005.01.005

Gait & Posture
Volume 23, Issue 2 , Pages 173-179, February 2006

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