Studies in Perception and Action II: Posters Presented at the VIIth International Conference on Event Perception and Action,

August
8-13, 1993, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada. Contributors: S. Stavros Valenti - editor, John B. Pittenger -
editor, International Conference on Event Perception and Action - orgname. Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of
Publication: Hillsdale, NJ. Publication Year: 1993. Page Number: 306.

Task Constraints on Postural Control

Gary Riccio
a
, Dongwoo Lee
a
, and Eric Martin
b


a. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, U.S.A.
b. Systems Research Laboratories, Inc., Dayton, OH, U.S.A.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine task constraints on the nonrigid movements of
the body during bipedal stance. Nonrigid movements are revealed by patterns of movement that
vary across body segments. The central assumption is that such nonrigid movements should be
both observable and controllable because they have specific affordances for perception and action
(Riccio, 1993, in press; Riccio & Stoffregen, 1988, 1991). Movement of the head relative to an
object of visual regard, for example, can have a greater influence on visual perception than does
movement of some other body segment. In addition, head movement can have a greater influence
on a task that requires high-acuity vision than on a task that simply requires the maintenance of
balance.

Method

Procedure. Observability and controllability of nonrigid movements is necessitated by task
constraints on such movement, and it should be revealed in an interaction between task and body
segment with respect to various movement parameters. This hypothesis was tested by comparing
patterns of movement at various body locations (analogous to modal analysis in mechanical
engineering) during a variety of tasks. The participant stood on a moveable platform while (a)
doing nothing, (b) tapping lightly at constant intervals on a keyboard, or (c) reading text that was
at a fixed location and not attached to the body or the moveable platform. Performance on the
tapping and reading tasks was not measured. Accelerometers were attached to the head, hip,
ankle, and the platform. The accelerometers were sensitive to tilt and acceleration in the sagittal
plane (e.g., anterior-posterior "sway") and, thus, they provided an estimate of the variation in
gravitoinertial force on the corresponding body segments. The variation in postural configuration
(accelerator outputs) was sampled 100 times per s. These postural movement patterns were
measured in trials that were 2.5 s in duration (250 samples per trial). The platform moved 5 cm
forward or backward at constant velocity for 0.4 s (from 0.5 to 0.9 s into each trial). There were
twelve trials for each combination of task (nothing, tapping, or reading) and direction of platform
movement (forward or backward). Order of the six conditions was randomized.

Analysis. Trials were arbitrarily divided into five equal time intervals (each 0.5 s). The mean
accelerometer output, at each location for the first 0.5 s in each trial, was subtracted from each of
the 250 samples in the corresponding trial (this minimized differences across trials that were due
initial tilt of the accelerometers). Histograms of this postural variation were constructed for each
task, direction, body segment, and time interval from the twelve trials and 50 samples for each
interval (600 samples per histogram). The (task x segment x direction x interval) matrix of
histograms is presented in Figure 1a. The associated distributions were quantitatively summarized
by the mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of the accelerometer outputs for each
time interval (each set of 50 samples) in each trial. Box plots for these parameters provided
summaries across each set of twelve trials per condition. The (task x segment x direction x
interval) matrix of box plots for the standard deviation are presented in Figure 1b.


Studies in Perception and Action II: Posters Presented at the VIIth International Conference on Event Perception and Action, August
8-13, 1993, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada. Contributors: S. Stavros Valenti - editor, John B. Pittenger -
editor, International Conference on Event Perception and Action - orgname. Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of
Publication: Hillsdale, NJ. Publication Year: 1993. Page Number: 306.






Figure 1. (a) Each panel in the matrix is a histogram for the accelerometer outputs over an
interval of 0.5 s. (b) Each panel in the matrix includes box plots for the three tasks. The ordinate
for the box plots in each cell is the standard deviation of the accelerometer outputs, and it
provides a measure of the (horizontal) spread in the corresponding histogram.



Studies in Perception and Action II: Posters Presented at the VIIth International Conference on Event Perception and Action, August
8-13, 1993, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada. Contributors: S. Stavros Valenti - editor, John B. Pittenger -
editor, International Conference on Event Perception and Action - orgname. Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of
Publication: Hillsdale, NJ. Publication Year: 1993. Page Number: 306.
Results and discussion

Mean change in postural configuration. Since the velocity at the end an interval was generally
close to the velocity at the beginning of an interval (i.e., near zero), the mean accelerometer
output primarily reflects the mean tilt in each interval (relative to the initial tilt). There was
residual forward tilt of the body segments after backward movement of the platform and residual
backward tilt after forward movement of the platform. The spread in the box plots (not presented)
indicated that the greatest variation across trials, within each condition, occurred at the head
during and after platform movement. This suggests that adaptation in postural control strategies
has its greatest effect at the head where the affordances of postural perturbations are most
important.

Standard deviation of postural variation. Standard deviation of the accelerometer outputs
provides the best estimate of the overall amount of movement during each interval. Figure 1b
reveals a main effect of segment that primarily reflects perturbation at the ankle due to platform
movement during Interval 2. Figure 1b also reveals a clear task x segment interaction that is due
to differences in movement of the head across tasks. More specifically, this effect suggests an
effortful backward tilt of the head to compensate for forward translation, and an effortful forward
tilt of the head to compensate for backward translation. This is because force due to tilt in one
direction adds to force due to acceleration in the "opposite" direction (tilt and acceleration affect
accelerometers in the same way and, thus, cannot be differentiated in this experiment). Such
compensation should be most important in the reading task since stability of the eyes has
affordances for performance in the task. Compensation should be least important for simple
stance (i.e., no other task); note that tilt and acceleration in the same direction (i.e., falling over)
would result in minimal variation in accelerometer output.

Higher-order moments of postural variation. Effects on skewness and kurtosis of the
accelerometer outputs are not as striking as the effects on the mean and standard deviation. These
higher-order moments of movement distributions indicate the degree of departure from smooth
continuous control because Gaussian distributions are characteristic of linear control. Skewness
can arise when movements that are large in extent but short in duration (or few in number or
number of samples) in one direction compensate for movements that are small in extent but long
in duration (or many in number or number of samples) in the other direction. Kurtosis can arise
when there are a relatively large number of moderate or large movement samples in both
directions. Such signs of ballistic (intermittent) control are apparent only as platykurtosis at the
ankle during Interval 2 (during platform movement) and to a greater degree during Interval 3
(after platform movement) and as platykurtosis together with skewness, in the direction of
platform movement, at the ankle during Interval 3.

Implications for future research. This exploratory experiment provides a powerful
demonstration that postural control cannot be understood without considering affordances at the
outset (see also, Riccio, 1993, in press; Riccio & Stoffregen, 1988, 1991). Postural movements
can vary significantly across tasks even when there are no variations in mechanical or
neurophysiological constraints on movement. In addition, the data on higher-order moments
suggests that, in some cases, standard engineering techniques can be used to model these task
constraints as viscoelastic stabilization of various body segments by the surroundings with which
the postural system is visually or manually coupled. It should be noted, however, that linear
models of postural control are not generally appropriate since task constraints and balance
constraints often interact (Riccio, in press).


Studies in Perception and Action II: Posters Presented at the VIIth International Conference on Event Perception and Action, August
8-13, 1993, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada. Contributors: S. Stavros Valenti - editor, John B. Pittenger -
editor, International Conference on Event Perception and Action - orgname. Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of
Publication: Hillsdale, NJ. Publication Year: 1993. Page Number: 306.
References

Riccio G. E. ( 1993). Multimodal perception and multicriterion control of nested systems: Self
motion in real and virtual environments (UIUC-BI-HPP-93-02). Urbana, IL: Beckman Institute
for Advanced Science and Technology.

Riccio G. E. (in press). "Information in movement variability about the qualitative dynamics of
posture and orientation". In K. M. Newell & D. M. Corcos (Eds.), Variability and Motor Control.
Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Riccio G. E., & Stoffregen T. A. ( 1988). "Affordances as constraints on the control of stance".
Human Movement Science, 7, 265-300.

Riccio G. E., & Stoffregen T. A. ( 1991). "An ecological theory of motion sickness and postural
instability". Ecological Psychology, 3, 195-240.