Body coordination during sit-to-stand in blind and sighted female children

Abstract

Detecting coordination pattern and coordination variability help us to find how joints organize collaboratively to perform sit-to-stand (STS) under restricted visual input. This experiment aimed to compare the coordination of the trunk, hip, knee, and ankle and its variability between individuals with long- and short-term restricted visual input during STS. Forty-five female children participated in this study, including fifteen congenitally blind (CB) children and 30 healthy children. The healthy children were divided randomly into two groups: one group in which the participants were instructed to keep their eyes open (EO) and another to keep their eyes closed (EC) for 20 min before the test. In the standing phase, CB children had a decreased ankle-knee vector angle on the nondominant (ND) side compared to that of healthy children. In the sagittal plane, a small coefficient-of-correspondences (CoC) was observed at seat-off (hip-trunk CoC on the dominant (D) side and ankle-hip CoC on the ND side) and in the preparation phase (ankle-hip CoC on the ND side and bilateral hip CoC). In the frontal plane (at the end: ankle-knee, in the standing phase: bilateral hip) a high CoC was observed (in the standing phase: knee-trunk CoC on the D side). The EC group had smaller CoCs at initiation event (knee-trunk and bilateral knee CoCs on both sides), the end event (ankle-knee and ankle-hip CoCs on the ND side), and in the standing phase (bilateral hip CoC) in the frontal plane than the other groups. The findings reveal that vector and CoC variables are altered because of long- and short-term restricted visual data and should be a focus in rehabilitation programs.

Keywords: Blind children; Coordination; Sit-to-stand; Vector coding; Visuomotor processing.