Presenter: Katya Trousset
Faculty Mentor: Andrew Karduna, David Phillips
Presentation Type: Poster 85
Primary Research Area: Science
Major: Human Physiology
Force matching sense (FMS), or the ability to reproduce a desired force one or more times, is one of three subdivisions that define proprioception. Unlike the other two, joint position sense (JPS) and kinesthesia, FMS is not associated with joint motion (Riemann & Lephart, 2002a). Previous research has found that JPS becomes more accurate as shoulder elevation and external load increases (D. Suprak, Osternig, & Karduna, 2005). The goal of the present study was to investigate how torque and shoulder abduction angle contribute to accuracy of FMS in an ipsilateral remembered force matching task. FMS was tested on the dominant arm of 12 subjects (6 males, 6 females) at three angles (50, 70, and 90 degrees of elevation in the scapular plane), and at 20, 40, and 60 percent above subject baseline torque. It was found that there was no significant change in error due to abduction angle (p > 0.05), but force reproduction error decreased as torque load increased (p < 0.05). From these findings, it appears that FMS does not follow the same pattern as JPS when reproducing a target at different angles, suggesting that these two components must be considered separately when assessing proprioception.