Impact of age on the postural stability measured by a virtual reality tracker-based posturography and a pressure platform system.

Background: Center of pressure (CoP) parameters are commonly used to evaluate age-related changes in postural control during standing. However, they mainly reflect ankle strategies and provide limited information about hip strategies, which are essential for postural control among the aged population. Body displacement at the lumbar level (LD) can be used as a proxy for hip strategies.

The Effects of Visual Backgrounds in the Virtual Environments on the Postural Stability of Standing.

A photorealistic scene in a head mount display (HMD) is considered high fidelity and associated with postural stability similar to that in the real world, but the effects of visual background under different standing conditions have not been examined. Thirty-four healthy adults performed four standing (standardized, narrow, tandem and one-leg) tasks in three scenes with an HMD, while viewing one of three scenes: a real room (real scene, RS), a photorealistic scene (VrS) and a blank scene (BS). The effects of the visual scenes and standing tasks on sway parameters were analyzed.

Influence of culture and age on the self-reference effect.

Relating information to oneself can enhance memory for young and older adults. However, most studies investigating self-referencing have focused on Western populations, for whom the self is considered an independent and distinct entity. Whether self-referencing as a mnemonic strategy similarly benefits East Asians, cultures associated with interdependent self-construal, has been investigated little, particularly with age.