Article

Typing while walking is an example of people's ability to interact with
technology while engaged in real life activities. Indeed, an increasing number of
studies have investigated the typing of text messages (texting) as a dual task
during locomotion. The objective of this review is to
(1) describe the task
requirements of texting-while-walking, (2) evaluate the measurement and
psychometric properties of texting as a dual task,
and (3) formulate methodological recommendations for researchers who use and report on
texting-while-walking. Twenty studies which used texting as a dual task during
gait were identified via a literature search. The majority of these studies
examined texting among young healthy adults and showed that, like other dual
tasks, texting-while-walking caused decrements in both gait and texting
performance. The cause of these decrements was most likely related to increased
visual task requirements, task-dependent cognitive requirements and fine motor
skills. Texting-while-walking gait measures were repeatable, but texting
performance showed poor reliability which further depended on skill. Preliminary
results show that texting-while-walking performance may discriminate between
populations (e.g., young vs. older adults) but no studies have yet examined its
predictive validity (e.g., for fall risk). In conclusion, texting-while-walking
is an ecologically-valid dual task for locomotion which has become much more
commonly used in recent years. As opposed to other secondary tasks such as
subtraction by 7 or generating words, texting may challenge various cognitive,
visual and sensorimotor domains depending on its content.
This imposes
task-specific methodological challenges on future research, which are discussed.
CI - Copyright (c) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS