A preliminary study on effects of vision, standing posture and support surface on human balance

Abstract

A preliminary experimental study on examining the effects of vision, standing posture and support surface on human balance was conducted. Planar deviation (PD), a parameter derived from recordings of center of pressure (CoP) with the aid of a static force platform, was used to assess the body sway and thereby human balance. The experimental results showed that PD had moderate to high short-term test-retest reliability and all main effects from three factors were significant, all interaction effects were not significant except the vision*support surface. The implications of these findings and future research directions were discussed.