Postural Control Entropy Is Increased When Adopting an External Focus of Attention

Abstract

Falls in older adults are a public health challenge due to their influence on well-being and healthcare costs. One way to address this challenge is to discover new methods to enhance postural control in older adults so they are better prepared to maintain an upright stance. Older and younger adults (N = 32) performed a static balance task on a force plate with no instructions, internal focus instructions, or external focus instructions. Center of pressure displacement time series were analyzed using sample entropy and standard deviation. Only the external focus condition significantly increased postural control entropy, which was observed across both age groups. This study showed that an external focus of attention can be used to increase postural control entropy within a single session of testing.

Targeted Application of Motor Learning Theory to Leverage Youth Neuroplasticity for Enhanced Injury-Resistance and Exercise Performance: OPTIMAL PREP

“…An external focus has robustly demonstrated enhanced performance and/or learning in numerous motor tasks including balance control [57,60,118,164,187,246], basketball free throw shooting [6], discus throwing [249], reaction and movement preparation time [113], sprint speed [98], and jump/hop distance [174,175,182,232]. More specifically, an external focus has resulted in more effective (e.g.…”

Practical Training Strategies to Apply Neuro-Mechanistic Motor Learning Principles to Facilitate Adaptations Towards Injury-Resistant Movement in Youth

“…The beneficial effects of an external focus on motor behavior have been reported for numerous tasks, skill levels, and populations [117]. Like the motivational pillars, an external focus can also enhance neuromuscular efficiency [110,120,125], but relative to the motivational pillars, has far more empirical support for a range of factors important for OPTIMAL PREP strategies, including balance control [26,27,50,85,96,124], performance and movement accuracy [92,95,125], jump/hop distance [89,91,93,115], and injury-resistant biomechanics [10,11,14,15,23,34,40,94,112,113]. As discussed previously [24], within the context of ACL injury literature, an external focus has been used interchangeably with whether the augmented feedback is provided verbally or visually [6].…”

Biathletes present repeating patterns of postural control to maintain their balance while shooting

“…With such a broad range of results, it is difficult to clearly determine if a higher or lower entropy value can be attributed to postural control efficiency. Rhea et al [ 28 ] suggested that before any conclusions are made, it is necessary to first take a look at the direction of changes and try to find an explanation for those changes.…”