Evaluation of the developmental process of postural control during school age using sway velocity

• Published in: Journal of Advanced Science Vol. 17; no. 3+4; pp. 209 - 217
• Main Authors: OHSHIMA, Hiroshi, ITOH, Takashi, KANAI, Naoaki, YAMAZAKI, Kiyoyuki, HAYASAKA, Yoshiaki, KIMURA, Tatsuhiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: Society of Advanced Science 2005
• Subjects: Center of Gravity; Development; Postural Control; Posture; Stabilometer; Vision
• ISSN: 0915-5651; 1881-3917
• DOI: 10.2978/jsas.17.209

We used a stabilometer to examine development of postural control in 174 school-age boys aged 6-14. Subjects stood upright on a stabilometer for 30 s under both eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions. At that time, we determined the mean location of the center of pressure (CP), the migration area of CP, the migration distance of CP, and the mean migration velocity of CP (VCP) using the measuring instrument. Along with age, the sway in all measuring items decreased under both eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions so that it shows that posture control developed as age advanced. Each measuring item was evaluated according to the ability of discretion by Mahalanobis distance under both eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions. The greatest discretion through all grades was shown for VCP. Nevertheless, VCP decreases more with eyes open than with eyes closed, the difference grows larger between the ages of 9 and 11, indicating that the degree of dependence on visual information in postural control increases during that period. Differences between eyes-open and eyes-closed decrease after age 11; they become constant after age 12, indicating that the ability to maintain a stable posture is obtainable without much use of visual information.