Biomedical subjects

Jeffrey M Haddad

Publications and source records attributed to Jeffrey M Haddad.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Which cues are available to 24-month-olds? Evidence from point-of-gaze measures during search.

In previous research 2-year-olds have failed to show knowledge of solidity in a search task in which a ball rolled behind a screen and was stopped by a barrier. The screen had four doors and the barrier was visible above the door hiding the ball. To establish what cues 2-year-olds might be using, precise point-of-gaze measures were taken during the hiding event. A transparent screen with opaque doors provided two cues: (1) the ball could be tracked until it failed to emerge, and (2) the barrier's position could indicate the correct door. Point-of-gaze measures revealed that children failed to use the more indirect cue of the barrier, which requires reasoning and spatial integration. Their search success was predicted only by the more immediate cue of actively tracking the ball. These findings support the claim that children use best those cues directly related to the object's disappearance, while failing to use cues that entail higher cognitive demands.

Child Development↗

PubMed2006

Evaluation of time-to-contact measures for assessing postural stability.

Postural stability has traditionally been examined through spatial measures of the center of mass (CoM) or center of pressure (CoP), where larger amounts of CoM or CoP movements are considered signs of postural instability. However, for stabilization, the postural control system may utilize additional information about the CoM or CoP such as velocity, acceleration, and the temporal margin to a stability boundary. Postural time-to-contact (TtC) is a variable that can take into account this additional information about the CoM or CoP. Postural TtC is the time it would take the CoM or CoP, given its instantaneous trajectory, to contact a stability boundary. This is essentially the time the system has to reverse any perturbation before stance is threatened. Although this measure shows promise in assessing postural stability, the TtC values derived between studies are highly ambiguous due to major differences in how they are calculated. In this study, various methodologies used to assess postural TtC were compared during quiet stance and induced-sway conditions. The effects of the different methodologies on TtC values will be assessed, and issues regarding the interpretation of TtC data will also be discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Adaptations in interlimb and intralimb coordination to asymmetrical loading in human walking.

The purpose of this study was to examine both the intralimb (within a limb) and interlimb (between the right and left limbs) adaptations that occur in response to a unilaterally applied leg load as subjects walked at their preferred walking speed. It was hypothesized that this adaptation would alter interlimb coordination while intralimb coordination remained invariant. Subjects (n = 12) were required to walk on a treadmill at preferred walking speed. Bilateral 3-D kinematic data were collected while a load placed on the leg was increased. Gait adaptations to leg-loading were assessed through changes in coordination patterns between specific limb couplings. Continuous relative phase (CRP) was used to evaluate changes in limb coordination under each experimental load condition compared to a no load baseline condition. Both changes in magnitude of CRP (root-mean-square (RMS) analysis) as well as temporal changes in CRP across the stride cycle (cross-correlation) were assessed. Cross-Correlation values changed with load for all interlimb couplings assessed suggesting alterations in interlimb coordination across the stride cycle. CRP cross-correlation values were close to 1.0 in all the intralimb couplings examined, showing a relative invariance in intralimb coordination. Coordination changes in RMS were also observed for the interlimb couplings. RMS changes were also observed in the intralimb couplings on the loaded side. It appears that gait adaptations to a unilaterally applied leg load appear both at the intralimb and interlimb level. However, the majority of changes did appear at the interlimb level, where CRP as assessed through both cross-correlation and RMS measures changed. This study supports previous results that suggested a tighter coupling exists at the intralimb level, leaving the majority of gait adaptations to occur at the interlimb level. The observed adaptation in differences between interlimb and intralimb coordination may provide insight into gait adaptations in pathological gait.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Stability and variability may respond differently to changes in walking speed.

In gait research it has often been assumed that variability and stability are negatively correlated, where increases in variability are assumed to equate with increases in instability. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that variability does not always equate with stability. To proof this point, a method was developed to directly assess stability and variability during the application of a visual perturbation at different walking speeds. Walking variability was measured by using the average standard deviation of the knee joint angle across the gait cycle. Walking stability was measured by the recovery time of the knee joint angle trajectory from the distortion induced by a visual perturbation that was delivered at the beginning of the stance phase. Five participants were required to walk at six different velocities on a treadmill (0.67, 0.80, 0.94, 1.07, 1.21, and 1.34 m/s). The coefficients of intraclass correlations for the experiment were 83% and 80% for the calculated stability and variability, respectively. The calculated stabilities were not sensitive to changes in walking speed (p>0.98). The calculated variability however decreased with increases in walking speed (p=0.004). No significant correlation between variability and stability was observed (r=-0.002). We suggest that gait stability is independent of variability during locomotion and should thus be measured independently.

Acceleration↗

PubMed2003

Limitations in the use and interpretation of continuous relative phase.

Continuous relative phase (CRP), a variable used to quantify intersegmental coordination, is difficult to interpret if care is not taken regarding the assumptions and limitations of the measure. Specifically, CRP is often interpreted as a higher resolution form of discrete relative phase (DRP). DRP, however, yields information regarding the relative dispersion of events in oscillatory signals while CRP describes their relationship in a higher order phase-plane domain. In this paper we address issues surrounding the calculation of CRP and suggest a new interpretation based on the aforementioned methodological issues. Through the use of test signals, with known properties, it was found that the CRP information will be arbitrary if no normalization procedures are used to account for frequency differences in the component oscillators. In addition, signals with non-sinusoidal trajectories will produce patterns in CRP that are not equivalent to discrete relative phase (DRP) measures. The implications of these issues are discussed.

Computer Simulation↗