The purpose of this study was to ascertain the importance of learning a motor task in a sitting position and its influence on gait. Thirty-one healthy subjects, divided into three groups, were asked to learn a synchronous heel-up-heel-down rhythm task in a sitting position and to reproduce the rhythm during their gait cycle on three separate occasions over a three-day period. This study provided evidence that training of a subject in a sitting position produced a nonspecific influence during ambulation. The inability to obtain an exact transfer of learning from a sitting position to gait and its implication to the specificity principle of learning are discussed. Some subjects had difficulty maintaining their performance over the three-day period. This finding was attributed in part to the influence of proactive and retroactive inhibition. Mat activities, therefore, seem to have a very limited impact on modifying gait. The clinical implications of these findings are presented.

The purpose of this study was to analyze functional change levels and determine Spearman rank order correlation coefficients about information gleaned from physical therapy discharge notes for a group of 212 patients with stroke who received physical therapy during an acute rehabilitation stay. Functional changes were determined in the categories of wheelchair skills, transfer ability, bed (mat) mobility, and ambulation. Comparisons also were made between a subgroup of the most severely involved patients and a subgroup of the least involved patients. The correlations between these functional changes and days of physical therapy were determined. Four conclusions were deduced: 1) All patients improved functionally after a stroke, 2) the improvement was related to the amount of time spent in physical therapy, 3) the more severely involved patients exhibited a greater relationship between functional gains and days spent in physical therapy than the least involved patients, and 4) the least involved patients exhibited the most gains in function. The implications of these findings were discussed.