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Effects of Task Interference on Kinematics and Dual-Task Cost of Running in Early Childhood

Panchao Zhao1,2, Kai Ma1, Zhongqiu Ji2

  • 1Department of Physical Education, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China.

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
|March 13, 2024
PubMed

Insights

Children

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric motor development
  • Biomechanics of locomotion
  • Developmental psychology

Background:

  • Early childhood (ages 3-8) is a crucial period for developing fundamental motor skills like running.
  • Running proficiency is essential for daily activities, yet young children are susceptible to falls.
  • Understanding how external tasks affect running mechanics is key to identifying motor control issues.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine the kinematic running patterns of children aged 3-8 under various interference conditions.
  • To establish a theoretical basis for understanding dynamic postural control interference in children.
  • To explore potential methods for screening motor development disorders.

Main Methods:

  • Recruited 200 children aged 3-8 years.
  • Utilized a BTS Bioengineering infrared motion capture system to collect running data.
  • Analyzed spatiotemporal and kinematic data across normalized running, cognitive dual-task, and obstacle crossing conditions using repeated measures ANOVA.

Main Results:

  • Running patterns in early childhood are significantly affected by age and interference tasks.
  • Interference tasks led to longer running cycle times and reduced stride length, step length, cadence, and speed.
  • Children prioritized task completion, reducing joint motion for cognitive tasks and increasing it for obstacle negotiation.

Conclusions:

  • Running characteristics evolve non-linearly with age, showing variability between adjacent age groups.
  • Cognitive dual-tasks impose a greater cost on running than obstacle crossing tasks.
  • The 'postural-cognition' dual-task paradigm can serve as a valuable tool for motor skill intervention in early childhood.

Keywords:
dual-task costearly childhoodinterferencekinematicsrunning

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