Measurement of human rotation behavior for psychological and neuropsychological investigations

Abstract

The investigation of rotation behavior in human beings enjoys a longstanding and enduring interest in laterality research. While in animal studies the issue of accurately measuring the number of rotations has been solved and is widely applied in practice, it is still challenging to assess the rotation behavior of humans in daily life. We propose a robust method to assess human rotation behavior based on recordings from a miniature inertial measurement unit that can be worn unobtrusively on a belt. We investigate the effect of different combinations of low-cost sensors-including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers-on rotation measurement accuracy, propose a simple calibration procedure, and validate the method on data from a predefined path through and around buildings. Results suggest that a rotation estimation based on the fusion of accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer measurements outperforms methods based solely on earth magnetic field measurements, as proposed in previous studies, by a drop in error rate of up to 32 %. We further show that magnetometer signals do not significantly contribute to measurement accuracy in short-term measurements, and could thus be omitted for improved robustness in environments with magnetic field disturbances. Results also suggest that our simple calibration procedure can compete with more complex approaches and reduce the error rate of the proposed algorithm by up to 38 %. The investigation of rotation behavior in human beings enjoys a longstanding and enduring interest in laterality research. While, in animal studies, the issue of accurately measuring the number of rotations has been solved and is widely applied in practice, it is still challenging to assess the rotation behavior of humans in daily life. We propose a robust method to assess human rotation behavior based on recordings from a miniature inertial measurement unit that can be worn unobtrusively on a belt. We investigate the effect of different combinations of low-cost sensors -including accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers -on rotation measurement accuracy, propose a simple calibration procedure, and validate the method on data from a predefined path through and around buildings. Results suggest that a rotation estimation based on the fusion of accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer measurements outperforms methods based solely on earth magnetic field measurements, as proposed in previous studies, by a drop in error rate of up to 32%. We further show that magnetometer signals do not significantly contribute to measurement accuracy in short-term measurements, and could thus be omitted for improved robustness in environments with magnetic field disturbances. Results also suggest that our simple calibration procedure can compete with more complex approaches and reduces the error rate of the proposed algorithm by up to 38%.

Arm swing asymmetry in overground walking

“…Focussed protocols examining the incidence, evolution and response to dual-tasking of dASI in early PD may result in a useful, cheap and robust metric for early diagnosis. We encourage researchers in this field to report both dASI and ndASI and, for those examining overground walking, to formally record turning tendencies 57 to better understand the relationship of these lateralised behaviours.…”

Turning in Circles: Understanding Manual Wheelchair Use Towards Developing User-Friendly Steering Systems

“…Interestingly, rotation behaviour is developing as an important parameter in neuropsychological studies, where the number of left/right turns are thought to be indicative of laterality or rotation biases ( Schaeffer, 1928 ; Bracha et al, 1993 ; Souman et al, 2009 ; Leuenberger et al, 2015 ). However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has attempted to describe turning behaviour of wheelchair users in general, or quantify turning radii specifically.…”

Childrens’ left-turning preference is not modulated by magical ideation

“…Future studies may rather focus on turning bias in natural environments, which have previously proved successful with adult participants (e.g. Mohr, Thut, Landis, & Brugger, 2003c) and whose long term assessment has made technical progress over the past decade (Leuenberger, Hofmann, Brugger, & Gassert, 2015). Second, our assessment of magical belief was certainly far from ideal.…”