@article{ref1,
title="The impact of mobile phone use on where we look and how we walk when negotiating floor based obstacles",
journal="PLoS one",
year="2017",
author="Timmis, Matthew A. and Bijl, Herre and Turner, Kieran and Basevitch, Itay and Taylor, Matthew J. D. and van Paridon, Kjell N.",
volume="12",
number="6",
pages="e0179802-e0179802",
abstract="Pedestrians regularly engage with their mobile phone whilst walking. The current study investigated how mobile phone use affects where people look (visual search behaviour) and how they negotiate a floor based hazard placed along the walking path. Whilst wearing a mobile eye tracker and motion analysis sensors, participants walked up to and negotiated a surface height change whilst writing a text, reading a text, talking on the phone, or without a phone. Differences in gait and visual search behaviour were found when using a mobile phone compared to when not using a phone. Using a phone resulted in looking less frequently and for less time at the surface height change, which led to adaptations in gait by negotiating it in a manner consistent with adopting an increasingly cautious stepping strategy. When using a mobile phone, writing a text whilst walking resulted in the greatest adaptions in gait and visual search behaviour compared to reading a text and talking on a mobile phone. <br><br>FINDINGS indicate that mobile phone users were able to adapt their visual search behaviour and gait to incorporate mobile phone use in a safe manner when negotiating floor based obstacles.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1932-6203",
doi="10.1371/journal.pone.0179802",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179802"
}