Parallel Walk Test: Its Correlation With Balance and Motor Functions in People With Chronic Stroke

Narrowing beam-walking is a clinically feasible approach for assessing balance ability in lower-limb prosthesis users

“…These results suggest narrowing beam-walking has reduced learning effects relative to fixed-width beam-walking. This is consistent with previous studies that showed participants’ performance on a progressively narrowing path remained stable (22) while participants’ performance on a fixed-width narrow path improved trial-to-trial (16, 23). This implies that tests with offering progressively increasing challenge to balance (e.g.…”

“…Adopting the conservative 15% threshold noted by Andresen (13), these results imply that a clinical test based on a narrowing beam-walking task would exhibit neither ceiling nor floor effects among ambulatory LLP users. In contrast, fixed-width beam and narrow-path walking tasks would probably require multiple beams or path widths to avoid ceiling and floor effects (4, 5, 7, 16). Eliminating or reducing ceiling effects relative to other types of beam-walking tests may confer additional benefits.…”

An investigation of the use of the Kinect system as a measure of dynamic balance and forward reach in the elderly

“…35 Previous studies have indicated a direct relationship between walking speed or lower extremity strength and dynamic balance. 36,37 These findings further strengthen our hypothesis that maximal velocity at the halfway time is more representative of dynamic balance. Maximal forward reach is considered an analogue of traditional functional reach distance.…”

Validation of the Narrowing Beam Walking Test in Lower Limb Prosthesis Users

“…We attribute the absence of ceiling and floor effects to the progressively increasing difficulty of the NBWT’s design (i.e., increasingly narrower walking beams). Tests based on tasks with a fixed level of difficulty often exhibit ceiling and floor effects 25,45–47 . Changing difficulty within a single test condition may mitigate ceiling and floor effects present in many contemporary clinical balance tests.…”