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The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running

PURPOSE: We sought to identify the developing maturity of walking and running in young children. We assessed gait patterns for the presence of flight and double support phases complemented by mechanical energetics. The corresponding classification outcomes were contrasted via a shotgun approach invo...

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Autores principales: Bach, Margit M., Daffertshofer, Andreas, Dominici, Nadia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7966230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33439307
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00421-020-04592-2
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author Bach, Margit M.
Daffertshofer, Andreas
Dominici, Nadia
author_facet Bach, Margit M.
Daffertshofer, Andreas
Dominici, Nadia
author_sort Bach, Margit M.
collection PubMed
description PURPOSE: We sought to identify the developing maturity of walking and running in young children. We assessed gait patterns for the presence of flight and double support phases complemented by mechanical energetics. The corresponding classification outcomes were contrasted via a shotgun approach involving several potentially informative gait characteristics. A subsequent clustering turned out very effective to classify the degree of gait maturity. METHODS: Participants (22 typically developing children aged 2–9 years and 7 young, healthy adults) walked/ran on a treadmill at comfortable speeds. We determined double support and flight phases and the relationship between potential and kinetic energy oscillations of the center-of-mass. Based on the literature, we further incorporated a total of 93 gait characteristics (including the above-mentioned ones) and employed multivariate statistics comprising principal component analysis for data compression and hierarchical clustering for classification. RESULTS: While the ability to run including a flight phase increased with age, the flight phase did not reach 20% of the gait cycle. It seems that children use a walk-run-strategy when learning to run. Yet, the correlation strength between potential and kinetic energies saturated and so did the amount of recovered mechanical energy. Clustering the set of gait characteristics allowed for classifying gait in more detail. This defines a metric for maturity in terms of deviations from adult gait, which disagrees with chronological age. CONCLUSIONS: The degree of gait maturity estimated statistically using various gait characteristics does not always relate directly to the chronological age of the child. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00421-020-04592-2.
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spelling pubmed-79662302021-04-01 The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running Bach, Margit M. Daffertshofer, Andreas Dominici, Nadia Eur J Appl Physiol Original Article PURPOSE: We sought to identify the developing maturity of walking and running in young children. We assessed gait patterns for the presence of flight and double support phases complemented by mechanical energetics. The corresponding classification outcomes were contrasted via a shotgun approach involving several potentially informative gait characteristics. A subsequent clustering turned out very effective to classify the degree of gait maturity. METHODS: Participants (22 typically developing children aged 2–9 years and 7 young, healthy adults) walked/ran on a treadmill at comfortable speeds. We determined double support and flight phases and the relationship between potential and kinetic energy oscillations of the center-of-mass. Based on the literature, we further incorporated a total of 93 gait characteristics (including the above-mentioned ones) and employed multivariate statistics comprising principal component analysis for data compression and hierarchical clustering for classification. RESULTS: While the ability to run including a flight phase increased with age, the flight phase did not reach 20% of the gait cycle. It seems that children use a walk-run-strategy when learning to run. Yet, the correlation strength between potential and kinetic energies saturated and so did the amount of recovered mechanical energy. Clustering the set of gait characteristics allowed for classifying gait in more detail. This defines a metric for maturity in terms of deviations from adult gait, which disagrees with chronological age. CONCLUSIONS: The degree of gait maturity estimated statistically using various gait characteristics does not always relate directly to the chronological age of the child. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00421-020-04592-2. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021-01-13 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC7966230/ /pubmed/33439307 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00421-020-04592-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Original Article
Bach, Margit M.
Daffertshofer, Andreas
Dominici, Nadia
The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running
title The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running
title_full The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running
title_fullStr The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running
title_full_unstemmed The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running
title_short The development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running
title_sort development of mature gait patterns in children during walking and running
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7966230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33439307
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00421-020-04592-2
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