Haptic feedback affects movement regularity of upper extremity movements in elderly adults

Abstract

Eight elderly adults were requested to perform circle movements with the hand through a commercial haptic platform, in two different conditions: with visual feedback, and with a facilitating force field produced by the machine. A measure of movement regularity (the mean square jerk in its normalized form) were captured to determine the effect of these feedbacks on hand kinematics. Regularity was higher when haptics feedback was given alone (MSJratio 6.48 ± 0.15), as compared to combining it with visual feedback (MSJratio 7.46 ± 0.18). We interpreted these differences as the ability to process visual information in trajectory tracking conditions as higher than the one to cope with external force fields, also when provided as a hypothetically facilitating one. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.