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

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posted on 2023-07-26, 14:09 authored by Matthew A. Timmis, Herre Bijl, Kieran Turner, Itay Basevitch, Matthew A. Taylor, Kjell N. van Paridon
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.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

12

Issue number

6

Page range

e0179802

Publication title

PLOS ONE

ISSN

1932-6203

Publisher

Public Library of Science

File version

  • Published version

Language

  • eng

Legacy posted date

2017-08-25

Legacy creation date

2017-08-16

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)

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