Presenter: Deborah Wang
Mentors: Li-Shan Chou and On-Yee Lo, Human Physiology
Poster: C8
Major: Human Physiology
College students often engage in risky mobile phone behaviors. Though texting while driving has been an extensively studied, the issue of texting or other smartphone usage while walking has only been recently examined as a daily hazard. This project focused on how smartphone usage affected a person’s response to an unexpected event when the subject was looking intently at the screen. This study examined the failure rate as the subject stopped in front of a projected line, and associated gait characteristics including stride length, center of mass (COM) velocity and COM medial-lateral sway. In this experiment, whole body motion was collected with 29 reflective bony landmark markers and a 10-camera system. Subjects first stopped in front of a projected line at the same location, and with the same timing for 5 trials (expected condition, EX). Subjects were then asked to stop in front of the line projected at different times or locations for 10 trials (unexpected condition, UN), and then simultaneously completing a Stroop test on an iPod touch under the same unexpected condition for another 10 trials (UN_Stroop). A Stroop test has subjects pick the ink color a word of a color (IE green, blue or red) is written in (IE green, blue or red). This made the UN_Stroop condition the most challenging. UN and UN_Stroop had a higher failure rate than the 0% of EX (33% and 17% respectively). Furthermore, with smartphone usage, gait velocity and stride length decreased while medial-lateral sway increased, which could negatively impact pedestrian safety.