Impact of destination-based visual cues on gait characteristics among adults over 75 years old: A pilot study

Visual information is a contributing factor affecting human gait and balance, especially in low lit environments. To mitigate the adverse effects of poor lighting conditions and help older adults perceive their positions in a community-dwelling setting, destination-based visual perceptual cues were designed as a specific lighting intervention and the effectiveness of the lighting intervention was tested in this study.

1) Does the designed lighting intervention improve older adults' walking performance? 2) Does the designed lighting intervention change older adults' walking strategy?

Fifteen community-dwelling older adults (165.5 ± 9.3 cm, 6 males, 9 females) were recruited. Participants were instructed to walk from their bed to the bathroom repeatedly in two lighting conditions, their usual nightlight condition and a novel LED strip lighting condition. Human motion patterns, including walking performance, lower-limb kinematics, and trunk motions, were recorded and analyzed. To investigate the effect of visual cues on walking behaviors, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed with lighting conditions as the within-subject factor.

Destination-based visual perceptual cues induced less walking time among adults over 75 years old, compared to the usual nightlight condition. The decrease in walking time was accompanied by changes in other walking behaviors, including decreased hip flexion, increased ankle flexion, larger trunk planar acceleration RMS, and smoother trunk log dimensionless jerk.

This study demonstrated the effectiveness of the designed lighting intervention upon the changes in older adults' walking performance and strategies. With the help of destination-based visual perceptual cues, the older adults spent a shorter period of time walking to their destination (i.e., walking faster), with an improvement in their walking strategies, such as mitigated lower-body biomechanical plasticity and smoother trunk movement.