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Busy walking paths, like in a park, city centre, or shopping mall, frequently necessitate collision avoidance behaviour. Lab-based research has shown how different situation- and person-specific factors, typically studied independently, affect avoidance behaviour. What happens in the real world is unclear. Thus, we filmed unscripted pedestrian walking behaviours on a busy urban path. We leveraged deep learning algorithms to identify and extract pedestrian walking trajectories and had unbiased raters characterize situations where two pedestrians approached each other from opposite ends. We found that smaller medial-lateral distance between approaching pedestrians and smaller crowd size predicted an increased likelihood of a subsequent path deviation. Furthermore, we found that whether a pedestrian looked distracted or held, pushed, or pulled an object predicted medial-lateral distance between pedestrians at time of crossing. Our results highlight both similarities and differences with lab-based behaviour and offer insights relevant to developing accurate computational models for realistic pedestrian movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children tend to make more last-minute locomotor adjustments than adults when avoiding stationary obstacles. The purpose of this study was to compare avoidance behaviors of middle-aged children (10–12 years old) with young adults during a head-on collision course with an approaching virtual pedestrian. Participants were immersed in a virtual environment and completed a perceptual decision-making task in which they had to respond to the future direction of an approaching virtual pedestrian once they disappeared. Following the perceptual task, participants walked along an 8-m pathway toward a goal, while avoiding a collision with a virtual pedestrian who approached along the midline than veered toward the left, right, or continued walking straight. Results revealed that children were able to correctly predict the future directions of the virtual pedestrian similar to adults, albeit at a slower response time (0.55 s vs. 0.33 s). During the action task, children initiated a deviation in their travel path later (i.e., closer to the virtual pedestrian) compared to adults (1.65 s vs. 1.52 s). Children were also more variable in their onset of deviation and time-to-contact. Although children appear to have developed adult-like perceptual abilities and can avoid an approaching virtual pedestrian, children employ riskier avoidance strategies and are highly variable, suggesting middle-aged children are still fine-tuning their perception-action system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Balance control is an essential element of locomotion that enhances biomotor abilities and physical performance. Individuals with extensive soccer experience display superior static single leg balance control compared to athletes of other sports as well as non-athletes. However, during a match, players often encounter greater challenges to single leg balance that require rapid decision-making skills and dynamic stability. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if individuals with extensive soccer training demonstrate superior single-leg balance control compared to non-athletes during a dynamic lower limb reaching task. Method: 22 varsity soccer players were matched with 21 non-athlete controls. Single-leg balance control was assessed during a Go/No-Go lower limb reaching task. Centre of pressure displacement (dCOP) was measured for both the dominant and non-dominant feet and compared between groups. Results: Soccer players displayed reduced dCOP during All Go trials compared to non-athletes, particularly in the medial-lateral plane. Additionally, soccer players displayed reduced anterior-posterior dCOP during Go/No-Go trials compared to non-athletes, particularly on their dominant foot. Conclusion: Athletes with soccer-specific training demonstrate improved executive control and use of proprioceptive information, which results in an improved ability to maintain single-support balance and corral COP during a dynamic visuomotor lower limb-reaching task. As such, balance training may be a useful addition to athlete training regimes to improve sport-specific performance. Future research would compare these results to athletes of other sports to explore balance control during a visuomotor reaching task and how it may differ based on sport training history.

Sports provide varying scenarios where athletes must interact with and avoid opposing players in dynamic environments. As such, sport-specific training can improve one's ability to integrate visual information which may result in improved collision avoidance behaviours. However, improved visuomotor capabilities are highly task dependent (i.e., athletes must be tested in sport-specific settings). The current study examined whether sport-specific training influenced individuals' collision avoidance behaviours during a sport-specific task in virtual reality. Untrained young adults (N = 21, 22.9±1.9 yrs, 11 males) and specifically trained athletes (N = 18, 20±1.5 yrs, 7 males) were immersed in a virtual environment and were instructed to walk along a 7.5m path towards a goal located along the midline. Two virtual players positioned 2.83m to the left and right of the midline approached participants on a 45° angle at one of three speeds: 0.8x, 1.0x, or 1.2x each participant's average walking speed. Participants were instructed to walk to a goal without colliding with the virtual players while performing a secondary task; reporting whether a shape changed above either of the virtual players' heads. Results revealed that athletes had a higher percentage of correct responses on the secondary task compared to untrained young adults. However, there was no group differences in the average time to first avoidance or average minimum clearance, but athletes were more variable in their avoidance behaviours. Findings from this study demonstrate that athletes may be more adaptive in their behaviours and may perform better on attentionally demanding tasks in dynamic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]