Background: Walking is an everyday activity that requires modifying patterns based on constraints posed by the environment. Meeting multiple constraints at once increases the challenge of modifying motor actions.
Research question: We asked if adults' strategies in adapting to spatial and temporal constraints were similar and if they would prioritize one constraint over the other when completing both.
Methods: Across three tasks, we investigated how adults altered their walking to cope with crossing obstacles (Task 1; N = 30), walking to a metronome beat (Task 2; N = 32), and crossing obstacles while walking to a metronome beat (Task 3; N = 30).
Results: Adults recalibrated to their baseline gait, but showed carryover effects after meeting a temporal constraint (allps>.05). We found an effect on the magnitude of deviation from metronome paces (F(262) = 58.86, p<.01). At the slow pace, participants stepped sooner than the beat, and at the fast pace they stepped later than the beat (all ps<.01). Adults altered the kinematics of their walking in response to a spatial constraint, but changed both the kinematics and kinetics of their walking patterns to meet temporal and combined spatial and temporal constraints. When attempting to meet both a spatial and temporal constraint simultaneously, they stepped sooner than the beat at all metronome paces (all ps<.01).
Significance: Our findings show separate walking strategies in adapting to spatial and temporal constraints. The presence of more than one constraint leads to prioritizing one over the other (i.e., a spatial constraint over a temporal constraint). These findings highlight that strategies for meeting constraints are dependent upon the type and number of constraints presented.
Keywords: Adaptation; Constraints; Gait; Motor; Walking.
Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.