Gaze Behavior of Older Adults During Rapid Balance-Recovery Reactions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Rapid stepping reactions are a prevalent response to sudden loss of balance and play a crucial role in preventing falls. A previous study indicated that young adults are able to guide these stepping reactions amid challenging environmental constraints using "stored" visuospatial information. This study addressed whether healthy older adults also use "stored" visuospatial information in this manner, or are more dependent on "online" visual control. METHODS: Gaze behavior was recorded during rapid forward-stepping reactions evoked by unpredictable platform perturbation, as participants performed a concurrent task demanding visual attention. Challenging obstacles and/or step targets were used to increase demands for accurate foot motion. Twelve healthy older adults (61-73 years) were compared to 12 young adults (22-29 years) tested in a previous study. RESULTS: Similar to young adults, older participants seldom redirected gaze downward in response to the perturbation (11% of trials), yet were commonly able to clear the obstacle (74% of trials) or land on the target (41% of trials) while stepping to recover balance. The threat posed by the obstacle apparently prompted older adults to initiate early downward saccades during a small proportion (18%) of obstacle trials; however, this did not improve ability to clear the obstacle. CONCLUSION: Aging did not alter the predominant visual-control strategy used to guide the stepping reactions. Both young and older persons typically used stored visuospatial information, thereby allowing vision/attention to be switched to other demands during the stepping reaction and minimizing head/eye movements that could exacerbate the destabilizing effect of the balance perturbation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".