Investigation of the relationship between joint position sense acuity and postural stability during walking

Abstract

Variability of step kinematics has often being linked with falls by adults, with both age and gender always being linked as the factor for causing it. However, there are limited studies between how individual joint position sense may affect walking stability as well. The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between joint position sense and walking gait stability. Three different age groups comprising the young adults, middle age adults and the elderly, each group contains six males and females took part in this study. The participants were required to first measure their joint position sense for knee, hip and ankle. Upon which, the participants will need to undergo motion analysis on the treadmill which measures their walking gait. The results indicated that young participants showed a much better relationship between walking gait stability with joint position sense. However, the elderly participants showed no relationship instead. In general, the study is unable to show any substantial relationships between walking gait stability with joint position sense when being compared across ages.