Tracking Motor Skills with Smartphones
Using smartphones, researchers measure motor skills easily across all ages.
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Our everyday lives depend on how well we can move and interact with the world around us. Simple tasks like writing, walking, or even buttoning a shirt require us to use our hands and feet with skill. Researchers have come up with different ways to measure how well we can perform these movements. For example, there’s a peg hole test where you race against the clock to insert as many small pins into holes as possible. Imagine trying to do that in thirty seconds! There's also a test where you move blocks between boxes and another where you tap your fingers on a table as quickly as possible. While there are many tests for how well our hands work, there aren’t as many for our feet. Some of the tests for feet include how many times you can tap your foot or balance on one leg without wobbling like a tree in the wind.
Measuring how well children and older adults move can tell us a lot. Studies show that kids get better at tasks like peg insertion as they grow, while older folks show a decline. One study used various movement tests on children and found that performance improved until they hit their teenage years when it leveled off.
Parents and health professionals need ways to track Motor Skills in children and see if older adults are having more trouble with movement. But the current tests often need special equipment and trained professionals, which can be costly and time-consuming. Plus, they don’t measure the quality of movement directly. The way a limb moves can be measured by how accurate or precise the movements are. What we really need is an easy way to assess how well someone can move without needing fancy equipment or experts.
A Smart Solution: Using Smartphones
This study aimed to develop an easy way to measure motor skills using smartphones, which are common and accessible. With around 4 billion people owning one, it’s safe to say they’re pretty popular! Since improved movement often shows up as less variability when moving at the same speed, the study had participants trace circles using their hands and feet while keeping time with a metronome. A metronome is that loud "tick-tock" device that musicians love, helping them keep a steady rhythm.
Researchers found comfortable speeds for kids and older adults to use-2.5 beats per second for the hands and 1.5 for the feet. To make it kid-friendly, a smaller smartphone was used for participants under 12. The smartphone recorded the movements of each limb, and researchers created a special program to analyze the data.
During the exercise, participants traced circles for 15 seconds. Their phones were either held in their hands or strapped to their ankles. The study gathered data from 1675 participants aged three to eighty-eight, giving a wide range of information about motor skills. After the circle tricks, participants filled out a questionnaire about which hand and foot they preferred to use.
What Did They Find?
By analyzing the data, researchers could see how accurate the movements were. They checked to see if the non-Dominant limbs (the ones people don’t use as much) were more variable in their movements compared to the dominant ones. This is important because it can show differences based on Handedness and footedness-whether someone is left or right-handed or footed.
Over the years, researchers noted that as kids grew, their hand and foot skills improved quickly, peaking in their mid-teens. After that, performance began to decline as people aged, and this shift was especially notable in the non-dominant limbs.
When looking closely at differences in movement based on handedness, researchers found that this variability was related to how often people used their dominant limbs. The more you use your right hand, for example, the better it might perform compared to the left hand.
How Age Affects Motor Skills
The study showed that from age four up to the mid-teens, movement skills rapidly improved and then plateaued. After this peak, motor skills started to decline as a person aged. Researchers found that older adults, especially, showed signs of decline in skill levels, likely due to changes in the brain.
It seems that changes in the brain, rather than just muscles getting weaker, play a big role in this decline. As we age, our reaction times slow down, and our ability to stand still without wobbling also suffers. The researchers noticed that the non-dominant hand and foot tended to decline in skill faster than the dominant ones, pointing to a greater loss of ability over time.
The Left-Handed Evolved
An interesting twist came when the researchers looked at left-handed individuals who had been forced to use their right hands during childhood. These forced-handed folks showed impressive motor skills with both hands. It turns out that when children are made to use the opposite hand, their brains adapt, leading to improvements in their motor skills across both hands.
But why did forcing someone to use their right hand also affect their feet? Researchers think it might be because when people reach for an object, they also use their opposite foot to maintain balance. So, when your right hand gets a workout, your right foot might be in on the action too.
The Limits of Self-Reporting
When it came to measuring handedness and footedness, researchers used two different questionnaires to classify individuals. However, they found that most people tended to cluster around the extremes (either very left-handed or very right-handed). This made it hard to gauge the actual degree of handedness just by asking questions.
Instead of relying solely on questionnaires, the researchers felt it was better to directly measure movement skills. This way, they could genuinely assess laterality and the effects of training on both the dominant and non-dominant limbs.
Conclusion: A Path Forward
The goal of this study was to develop a simple way to measure motor skills for people of all ages using technology we all have at hand. The smartphone-based assessment showed that motor skills change with age and practice.
With the findings, there's hope for better tracking of movement skills, especially for kids in school and older adults. This new tool can play a big role in understanding how our movements can improve over time or decline as we age.
For parents, this means they can keep better tabs on their children's development. For healthcare professionals, it offers a quick way to assess clients' motor function without needing expensive equipment or specialized training.
The future looks promising as we lean on technology-who knew your smartphone could help unlock secrets about your movement skills? It might not replace your gym buddy, but it sure can give you a run for your money in the motor skill department!
Title: 15 second assessment of hand and foot motor skill using a smartphone
Abstract: Motor skills are essential for daily functioning and serve as key indicators of healthy development and aging. However, existing assessments of motor skill are inaccessible to the public and do not directly measure the quality of the movement. Here, we developed a convenient and robust measure of motor skill that uses a smartphone app to provide on-the-spot assessment in just 15 seconds. To validate our method, we asked 1675 participants between the ages of three to eighty-eight years old to trace circles at a fixed rhythm with a smartphone, which was either held in the hand or strapped to the ankle. Motor skill was quantified by the smartphone app using an algorithm that calculated the variability in the accelerations trajectory. Our assessment revealed significant changes in the skill of the hands and feet with age and practice. The variability of the hands and feet linearly decreased and matured in the mid-teens, but it regressed gradually thereafter. Laterality, or the difference in the motor skill between the left and right limbs, increased with age as the non-dominant hand and foot regressed faster in the elderly. Motor practice affected both skill and laterality as left-handers who were forced to write with their right-hand during childhood had a tell-tale sign of stronger right-handedness and, surprisingly, right-footedness. Our assessment aims to democratize motor skill assessment, making it accessible for professionals and users of all ages.
Authors: Atsushi Takagi, Noriyuki Tabuchi, Wakana Ishido, Chikako Kamimukai, Hiroaki Gomi
Last Update: Oct 31, 2024
Language: English
Source URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.29.621007
Source PDF: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.29.621007.full.pdf
Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Changes: This summary was created with assistance from AI and may have inaccuracies. For accurate information, please refer to the original source documents linked here.
Thank you to biorxiv for use of its open access interoperability.