Stair negotiation is one of the most difficult and hazardous locomotor tasks for older adults with fall-related accidences reported frequently. Since knowledge about inter-joint coordination during stair walking provides insights to age-related changes in neuromuscular control of gait that can inform prevention or intervention strategies, the current study investigated the effect of age on the pattern and variability of inter-joint coordination during stair-floor transitions during gait. Gait and motion analyses of the lower extremities of 20 young and 20 older adults during floor to stair (F-S) and stair to floor (S-F) walking transitions provided continuous measures of relative phase (CRP) that assessed inter-joint coordination of the hip, knee, and angle joints. The mean absolute relative phase (MARP) and deviation phase (DP) provided descriptive metrics for CRP pattern and variability respectively. For hip-knee CRP pattern, older adults demonstrated significantly smaller MARP than young adults in stance and most swing phases during F-S and S-F. For knee-ankle, older adults showed a significant smaller MARP of the trailing limb during S-F than young adults. In most stance and swing phases, the hip-knee DP values of older adults were significantly lower than that of young adults. Significant lower knee-ankle DP values of older adults were only detected in swing phase during S-F. The findings suggest that normal aging adults have less independent control of adjacent joints compared to younger adults suggesting they have less flexibility to modulate inter-joints coordination appropriately during stair walking transitions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 May 2015.
All research outputs
#25,632,232
of 31,710,808 outputs
Outputs from Gait & Posture
#2,829
of 3,663 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#215,647
of 295,698 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Gait & Posture
#24
of 46 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 31,710,808 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 16th percentile – i.e., 16% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,663 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.3. This one is in the 19th percentile – i.e., 19% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 46 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 17th percentile – i.e., 17% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
