NCT06932679

Perception of Affordances and Obstacle Crossing in People With Parkinson's Disease and Healthy Adults

Affordances and Impairments: A Paradigm for Understanding Obstacle Crossing in Parkinson's Disease

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 180 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Haifa · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 20 Years – 80 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study aims to explore how young adults, older adults and people with Parkinson's disease (PwP), perceive their abilty to cross obstacles while walking, and how this perception is related to their actual performance of obstacle crossing and disease-related motor and cognitive impairments. The study will explore this percepeption and the actual performance in different walking environments(floor, synthetic grass turf). Understanding how people perceive obstacles may help improve rehabilitation methods and reduce the risk of falls. The study will take place at the Motor Performance Laboratory, University of Haifa, and will include walking tasks, eye-tracking measurements, and motor and cognitive assessments.

Detailed description

This study investigates the role of affordance perception - the ability to perceive opportunities for action - during obstacle crossing in people with Parkinson's disease (PwP). Falls are highly prevalent in PwP, often resulting from tripping over obstacles. While previous research has mainly focused on gait impairments, this study uniquely examines the perceptual stage that precedes movement and the association between perception, cognition, and motor performance. Participants will include 60 PwP and 120 healthy adults (60 older adults and 60 young adults). All participants will perform walking tasks involving obstacle crossing under different environmental conditions (e.g., different obstacle heights and surfaces). Prior to walking, participants will judge whether they can safely cross the obstacle. Eye-tracking glasses will measure visual exploration patterns to assess how participants scan the environment. Additionally, walking variables such as speed and step length, will be recorded using wearable sensors. The study will explore: 1. Differences in affordance perception between PwP and healthy adults. 2. Associations between motor and cognitive impairments and affordance perception in PwP. 3. How affordance perception relates to gait performance during obstacle crossing. Results from this study may help to develop new intervention strategies aimed at improving safe walking and obstacle negotiation in PwP.

Conditions

• Parkinson's Disease (PD)

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Assessment of Gait and Visual Exploration	Participants will perform walking tasks involving obstacle crossing while their gait and visual exploration patterns are recorded using wearable sensors and eye-tracking glasses. This is a non-invasive observational study with no therapeutic intervention.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-04-24
• Primary completion: 2028-04-24
• Completion: 2028-06-24
• First posted: 2025-04-17
• Last updated: 2025-07-22

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Israel