Evaluation of peripheral and focal vision in proprioceptive differentiation of underfoot inversion angles: Comment on Witchalls, et al. (2013)
Abstrakt
A study by Witchalls, et al. (2013) mentioned that the addition of focal vision to proprioception testing with walking produces greater proprioceptive acuity than peripheral vision alone (measured ankle proprioception in athletes with or without chronic ankle instability during a stepping task on the Active Movement Extent Discrimination Apparatus; AMEDA). According to this study, people with impaired proprioception, e.g., athletes with chronic ankle instability, may profit from looking down during walking or running.
This commentary notes that the active stepping task may not be truly comparable to rhythmic stepping, which is characteristic for walking. In addition, we suggest several amendments to the methodology for further studies related to ankle proprioception measurement, e.g., monitoring of proband eye attention during a stepping task or clear objective evaluation of the subject sample.