The impact of mobile phone use on where we look and how we walk when negotiating floor based obstacles.

Autor: Matthew A Timmis, Herre Bijl, Kieran Turner, Itay Basevitch, Matthew J D Taylor, Kjell N van Paridon
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 12, Iss 6, p e0179802 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179802
Popis: Pedestrians regularly engage with their mobile phone whilst walking. The current study investigated how mobile phone use affects where people look (visual search behaviour) and how they negotiate a floor based hazard placed along the walking path. Whilst wearing a mobile eye tracker and motion analysis sensors, participants walked up to and negotiated a surface height change whilst writing a text, reading a text, talking on the phone, or without a phone. Differences in gait and visual search behaviour were found when using a mobile phone compared to when not using a phone. Using a phone resulted in looking less frequently and for less time at the surface height change, which led to adaptations in gait by negotiating it in a manner consistent with adopting an increasingly cautious stepping strategy. When using a mobile phone, writing a text whilst walking resulted in the greatest adaptions in gait and visual search behaviour compared to reading a text and talking on a mobile phone. Findings indicate that mobile phone users were able to adapt their visual search behaviour and gait to incorporate mobile phone use in a safe manner when negotiating floor based obstacles.
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