People with Parkinson’s disease (PD) manipulate clothing as part of their daily life. To understand how deteriorating motor skills affect the performance of dressing/undressing activities, this study investigated performance in handling clothing fastening. Participants were distributed into two groups: older adults with PD and neurologically matched healthy individuals (control group). Coordination and usability were evaluated. The PD group demonstrated worse performance than the control group in usability for types of buttons, and this was affected more intensely by small compared with large fasteners. This study demonstrated the need for increased awareness by clothing companies to develop products that can promote independence.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.