On the development of infant walking

Abstract

Typically developed adult gait is well understood, however, the development of infant walking from ~1 year to 2 years old has been less investigated. This lack of research is in part due to infant gait being more challenging from the nature of a child’s anatomy (anthropometrics), stride length (typical force plates are designed for adult step lengths), and cooperation (children require more attention and direction) during motion analysis. This thesis aimed to establish a set of protocols for capturing typically developed infant gait and to model the biomechanics of an infant at first onset of walking and 1-year follow-on. The main outcomes regarding protocols were that: (i) standard embedded force plates are not suitable for infants due to the large plate separation and the small step-length of infants; however, split-belt force plates circumvent this problem but are still challenging due to the need to keep each foot on a separate belt; (ii) Standard markers are generally distracting to infants and often get removed, which may be addressed using removable bands with stitched markers; (iii) Parental involvement during the gait collection is key to a successful experiment and researchers should incorporate this into their design. The main research outcomes regarding infant gait were that infants slowly progressed towards mature features of walking. Specifically, the plantar flexion and dorsiflexion develop rapidly during the first year of walking.