A comparison of workload demands imposed by different types of distracted walking tasks and its effect on gait

Abstract

A growing body of research has found that distracted walking is a safety concern due to reduced situation awareness and the possibility of compromised gait performance. Distraction tasks, such as texting, browsing social media, and playing games, differ in terms of their physical and cognitive demands. However, few studies have examined whether there are differences in how physical and cognitive demands impact gait. The goal of this paper is to evaluate workload differences between four distraction tasks that represent common smartphone functions and may differ in terms of physical and cognitive demands: 1) No distraction, 2) Reading, 3) Tapping, 4) N-Back. We characterized the workload differences using three methods, a subjective workload assessment (NASA-TLX) and two physiological workload measures, pupil width and blink rate. Our results suggest that the chosen distraction tasks differ in their workload demands. While, a preliminary analysis of descriptive gait parameters failed to find significant differences between the distraction conditions, further analysis of more complex gait measures may be required to understand differences between physical and cognitive demands.

Distraction From Smartphones Changed Pedestrians’ Walking Behaviors in Open Areas

“…The three phone tasks were intended to simulate tasks with varying levels of workloads. The tapping task, which simulates dialing or texting, was shown to have a larger physiological workload as well as a higher visual demand (Zheng et al, 2020). The gaming task was designed to replicate a challenging working memory task, and it necessitates a greater physiological workload as well as a larger cognitive workload (Zheng et al, 2020).…”

“…These phone tasks represent common activities that individuals perform with their phones, with reading corresponding to browsing of information, tapping representing typing or dialing phone numbers, and the N-back game representing more difficult memory tasks, such as memorizing two-factor authentication codes. Our previous study (Zheng et al, 2020) has shown that between these three phone tasks, the N-back game is the most mentally demanding, while reading is the least mentally demanding.…”

“…Participants' movements were recorded using a wearable motion capture system (MVN Awinda, Xsens Technologies BV). This system uses 17 individual inertial measurement unit sensors (36 mm × 24.5 mm × 10 mm, 10 g), which were attached to the participants according to the manufacturer's instruction manual (Figure 1, left; Luo et al, 2020;Robert-Lachaine et al, 2017;Schepers et al, 2018;Zheng et al, 2020).…”

“…In this study, we investigate the effects of three smartphone operational tasks (phone tasks) on the gait and whole-body posture of individuals as they traverse through an outdoor walking environment. The three tasks (reading, tapping, and gaming) represent increasing levels of cognitive, visual, and manual demands (Zheng et al, 2020). Based on previous literature, the following hypotheses were proposed: (a) distraction from smartphones will reduce phone users' walking speed and alter other spatiotemporal gait parameters in an outdoor walking environment and (b) distraction from smartphones will change phone users' walking posture (i.e., whole-body joint kinematics) in an outdoor walking environment.…”

Effects of Light Conditions and Falls Concerns on Older Adults’ Gait Characteristics: A Preliminary Study

“…At last, older adults often suffer from chronic diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's disease, Cataracts, & Glaucoma); hence, it is also worthwhile to consider chronic diseases, especially eye diseases, as a factor that influences gait characteristics in different light conditions. Finally, it has been reported that numerous environmental and implicit factors such as the landscape of the walking surface (Hu et al, 2018) and mental distraction (Zheng et al, 2020) can all influence gait performance under normal lighting conditions. How these factors affect human gait in the dark environment merits further investigation.…”