Abstract
PurposeWe sought to identify the developing maturity of walking and running in young children. We assessed gait patterns for the presence of flight and double support phases complemented by mechanical energetics. The corresponding classification outcomes were contrasted via a shotgun approach involving several potentially informative gait characteristics. A subsequent clustering turned out very effective to classify the degree of gait maturity.MethodsParticipants (22 typically developing children aged 2–9 years and 7 young, healthy adults) walked/ran on a treadmill at comfortable speeds. We determined double support and flight phases and the relationship between potential and kinetic energy oscillations of the center-of-mass. Based on the literature, we further incorporated a total of 93 gait characteristics (including the above-mentioned ones) and employed multivariate statistics comprising principal component analysis for data compression and hierarchical clustering for classification.ResultsWhile the ability to run including a flight phase increased with age, the flight phase did not reach 20% of the gait cycle. It seems that children use a walk-run-strategy when learning to run. Yet, the correlation strength between potential and kinetic energies saturated and so did the amount of recovered mechanical energy. Clustering the set of gait characteristics allowed for classifying gait in more detail. This defines a metric for maturity in terms of deviations from adult gait, which disagrees with chronological age.ConclusionsThe degree of gait maturity estimated statistically using various gait characteristics does not always relate directly to the chronological age of the child.
Highlights
Running and walking—two everyday types of locomotion in humans—are distinguishable to the naked eye by obvious differences in kinematics and kinetics
There is a well-defined flight phase during which none of the legs are in contact with the ground, unlike walking that comprises a double support phase during which both legs are on the ground together
We showed that young children who are asked to run on a treadmill at comfortable speeds are not able to do so
Summary
Running and walking—two everyday types of locomotion in humans—are distinguishable to the naked eye by obvious differences in kinematics and kinetics. By contrast, the energy recovery does not depend on speed and fluctuates around 5% (Cavagna et al 1964, 1976). This observation motivates an alternative and, likewise accepted measure to distinguish walking from running, namely out-of-phase versus in-phase oscillations of potential and kinetic energies as well as the exchange between them
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