Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

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Behavioural Brain Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bbr

Research report

Walking there: Environmental inuence on walking-distance estimation

M. Iosa , A. Fusco, G. Morone, S. Paolucci
Clinical Laboratory of Experimental Neurorehabilitation, Fondazione Santa Lucia I.R.C.C.S., Rome, Italy

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 3 July 2011
Received in revised form 30 August 2011
Accepted 4 September 2011
Available online 12 September 2011
Keywords:
Path length estimation
Target-directed walking
Locomotor body schema
Gait
Distance perception
Environmental cues

a b s t r a c t
In a dark environment, when vision is excluded, humans are usually able to walk towards a target the
position of which was previously memorized. Changes in spatio-temporal gait parameters, the presence
of obstacles on the ground or pathway tilt can affect their performances. The aim of this study was
to investigate the inuence of the environment on this ability. We have enrolled sixty healthy subjects,
separately tested in a small indoor and in an outdoor open-eld environment. In experiment 1, signicant
differences were found between 15 indoor and 15 outdoor blindfolded walkers. According to previous
studies, the distances walked outdoors were not signicantly different from the three-tested targets
distances (3 m, 6 m and 10 m). Conversely, a systematic and signicant undershooting was observed for
blindfolded indoor walkers for all the three distances (errors: 0.34, 0.73 and 1.99 m, respectively).
This indoor undershooting was found related to shorter steps not compensated by any increment of the
step number. In experiment 2, also the perception of the indoor distance resulted underestimated in
other two tested groups of 15 subjects each. But the perceived distance resulted poorly correlated with
motor performances (R = 0.23, p = 0.410). In spite of the fact that the errors were consistent among trials,
when indoor walkers could not access to environmental acoustic features, their performance resulted
highly variable among subjects, but it improved, on average. At the light of these results, the environment
seems acting as a selective tuning between different strategies.
2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Slowly, he opened the door and walked into the dark room. People are usually accurate in walking without vision to previously
seen targets, such as above described for Father Frollo, the famous
character of Victor Hugos The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Many studies have investigated this ability that requires the
minimization of the distance between the body position, continuously updated during walking, and the memorized position of a
previously seen target. Vision improves body stability during standing and locomotion, and it drives gait cycle modulation, navigation,
and obstacle avoidance [13]. However, when there are no visual
information, other senses could be used, such as acoustic feedback,
tactile exploration or internally generated self-motion signals for
determining own current position and orientation [1,15]. Accurate
performances of target-directed blind walking were recorded for
distances out to 24 m under open eld conditions [21], even for
passive translations [9,15].

Abbreviations: WS, walking speed; WD, walked distance; RD, real distance; N
steps, number of steps; SL, step length; SF, step frequency; RMS, root mean square;
HR, harmonic ratio; AP, antero-posterior; LL, latero-lateral; CC, cranio-caudal.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 06 51501005; fax: +39 06 51501004.
E-mail address: m.iosa@hsantalucia.it (M. Iosa).
0166-4328/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2011.09.007

This shows that efferent, proprioceptive and vestibular information about locomotion could be closely calibrated to visually
perceived path, especially for athletes [3] and young subjects [14].
To explain the ability to estimate the distance walked while
blindfolded, it has been hypothesized the existence of an internal model, called locomotor body schema [7]. This should combine
the internalized knowledge of body segment lengths with the perceived exo-extensions of lower limb joints during the gait cycle,
allowing humans to estimate the length of their steps. In fact, the
step length is the result of a complex relationship between hip, knee
and ankle angular positions and thigh, shank and foot lengths. And
the walked distance is the result of the combination of the step
length and the number of performed steps.
However, this target-directed blind walking ability was found
altered if subjects were asked to walk out of self-selected conditions. When subjects were asked to walk at slower/faster speeds [3]
or with shorter/longer steps [15], they tended to over/undershoot
the target. On the other hand, faster self-selected speed after many
task repetitions were observed associated with overshooting [19],
while undershooting was observed in subjects walking on stilts [7].
From a perceptive point of view, our capacity to judge the
distance of a target from us can be affected by the surrounding environment [12]. For example, this distance appears greater when it
is near the end of a hallway than when farther from its end [20], or
when the pathway is ascending and hence requiring more effort to

M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

be travelled [24]. Furthermore, when a gap is present in the ground

between subjects and target, they perceive the distance as longer
than it really is [23]. Then, mental walking time increases systematically when subjects carry a weight on their shoulders, despite
actual walking time does not vary [6].
Despite all these alterations related to the environmental inuence on the distance perception, far too little attention has been
paid to the possible effects of different environments on the motor
ability to walk towards a memorized target without visual support. Furthermore, the previous studies on this motor ability were
usually performed in large environments such as wide laboratories
or parking lot, differently from the real situations in which people
could usually experience walking without visual support.
The aim of this study was to investigate the inuence of the
environment on blind walking towards a memorized target. For
this purpose, we have investigated this ability for healthy subjects
in an indoor small and in an outdoor open eld environment. A
wearable device, containing a triaxial accelerometer, for measuring upper body accelerations and to estimate spatio-temporal gait
parameters was used for objectively quantifying movement patterns during walking [11].
2. Material and methods
2.1. Participants
Sixty healthy subjects were enrolled in this study. They were randomly allocated
into one of two groups (indoor vs outdoor walkers) and in one of two experiments. Experiment 1 tested the capacity of subjects to walk blindfolded towards
a memorized target located at one of three possible distances (3 m, 6 m and 10 m)
in two different environments (indoors vs outdoors). It was performed by fteen
subjects indoors (28.9 5.2 years old, 8 females and 7 males) and fteen subjects
outdoors (26.2 4.5 years old, 9 females and 6 males). Experiment 2 tested the
role of distanceperception, acoustic information and trial repetitions on the above
capacity in the same two environments of experiment 1. Similarly to the previous
experiment, experiment 2 was performed by 15 subjects indoors and other 15 subjects outdoors (30.7 8.4 years old, 9 females and 6 males; 28.5 5.3 years old,
8 females and 7 males, respectively). In some previous studies about blindfolded
walking, there were long familiarization phases before testing subjects. Conversely,
we wanted to test nave subjects (similarly to Bredin et al. [3]) to avoid drift aftereffect due to previous practice [19]. For this reason, we decided not to give them
any practice of blindfolded walking in the two environments before testing. Furthermore, we preferred to use different groups of subjects instead of a testretest
study design because memory (and task order) can play a fundamental role into distance perception [19,31]. Finally, the subjects were asked to perform the test with
a pair of comfortable shoes they usually wore, avoiding special shoes such as boots,
ballerinas, high-heeled ones or ip-ops.
2.2. Environments
The indoor environment was a hall having a length of 18 m and a width of 4 m
encompassed by walls. The outdoor environment was a paved area in the middle
of a big lawn, divided into two pathways, compassed by grass with distant trees
and obstacles. The pathway used for the two experiments had a length of 18.4 m
and a width of 4.4 m. Both the indoor and outdoor grounds were homogeneous
and paved by rm slabs similar in materials, colours and dimensions. The indoor
environment was sufciently quiet and well illuminated by the daylight coming
from two big windows (all the experiments were performed during the morning).
Also the outdoor environment was distant from specic sound sources. Nevertheless
some external/far noises were audible in indoor/outdoor environments. The two
environments were depicted in Fig. 1.
2.3. Experiment 1: blindfolded walking to a memorized target
Subjects were asked to stand on a strip of tape xed on the ground (startingline). The target was a person who stood on one of three other strips placed on
the ground at a distance of 3 m, 6 m and 10 m from the starting-line. The subjects
were asked to memorize the position of the target, xing it for few seconds, to
blindfold themselves and, after an acoustic signal, to walk to the target (who moved
away immediately before subjects started to walk, as previously explained to the
subjects). Participants were asked to stop walking when they thought to had been
achieved the target (i.e., to be in the same position of the previously seen standing
person) and to maintain that position. An experimenter measured their errors with
a graduated tape and then attended the subjects, still blindfolded, on the starting
line. The sequence of the three tasks (one for each distance) was randomized among
subjects.

125

During these trials, subjects were reassured that an experimenter can promptly
advise them if they were going to hit a wall in indoor conditions. However, none of
them needed his intervention.
To avoid some possible learning and/or cognitive effects, no verbal feedback was
given to the participants about their performances. In fact, subjects had been guided
back to the starting-line still blindfolded by the experimenter.
After the three blindfolded conditions, subjects were asked to stand on the
starting-line and, after an acoustic signal, to walk to the 10 m target line formed
by tape on the ground with their eyes opened. This test was performed in order to
measure the normally self-selected gait spatio-temporal parameters under visual
control.
2.4. Experiment 2: testing distance perception, acoustic inuence and
repeatability
In the rst task of experiment 2, participants were asked to judge the distance
between themselves and the target person located at 8 m from them, verbalizing
it. Before testing, at each participant was shown a 1 m ruler as aid for distance
judgement, similarly to the experiment performed by Stefanucci et al. [24].
In the second task, the blindfolded walkers wore headphones in which white
noise was played in order to eliminate environmental acoustic feedbacks [3,9]. In
this test, the target person was located at the distance of 10 m.
In the third task, we investigated the subjects precision, i.e. the repeatability of
their performances among three trials in which subjects could see the target person, located at 6 m from the starting-line, and they were asked to walk blindfolded
towards the target position (without headphones).
This second experiment was specically designed to further investigate: if the
distance perception was different in the two different environments; if the environmental acoustic clues could affect the subjects performances; if subjects were
more accurate in an indoor versus outdoor environment. It was performed by other
two groups of 15 subjects each, in the same two environments (above described)
and using the same measurement settings (below described) of the experiment 1.
To avoid learning effects, cross-effects and/or fatigue, only one distance was tested
for each task of experiment 2.
2.5. Measurement setting
Accelerometry, a suitable simple quantitative technique, was used to objectively
assess the dynamic gait stability of subjects during walking and to estimate spatiotemporal gait parameters [11]. During all the above tests, participants wore an
elastic belt containing a wireless triaxial accelerometer (FreeSense , Sensorize s.r.l.,
Rome; fsampling = 100 Hz) located on the back in correspondence of L2L3 spinous
processes, close to the subjects centre of mass, and providing acceleration signals
along the three body axis (antero-posterior, AP; latero-lateral, LL; cranio-caudal,
CC). The error between walked distance (WD) and real target distance (RD) was
measured by the experimenter using a 10 m graduated tape. Subjects, in fact, were
asked to maintain their achieved position after their decision to stop their walking
to allow the error measurement (error = WD RD). The time between rst and last
subjects movement (time) and the number of performed steps (N steps, equal to
the number of AP-acceleration negative peaks, as shown in Fig. 2 for a representative subject) were computed from 20 Hz-low-pass-ltered accelerometric signals.
Then, other spatio-temporal gait parameters were estimated: the mean step length
(SL = WD/N steps), the mean step frequency (SF = N steps/time), the mean walking
speed (WS = WD/time). The acceleration root mean square (RMS) was used to assess
the upper body dynamic stability. In fact, it is an indicator of average magnitude
of upper body accelerations, because it coincides with the standard deviation in
a signal with null mean [3,8]. The gait rhythmicity was evaluated by the computation of the harmonic ratio (HR). It is the ratio between even/odd harmonics on
AP and CC and between odd/even harmonics on LL over a stride (two steps). We
reported in the results the mean values of RMS and HR, computed along each body
axis and over three strides recorded in the middle of walking pathway [11]. Because
an increase of walking speed (WS) corresponds to an increase of RMS, independently on subject stability, a normalized RMS was also computed as follows [16]:
RMSn = RMS SL/WS2 = RMS SF/WS.

3. Results of experiment 1
3.1. Effects of environment on blindfolded walking
During blindfolded walking to a memorized target, a good
performance was recorded for outdoor walkers. Conversely,
indoor walkers signicantly undershot the target, as shown in
Fig. 3. This difference was statistically signicant, as shown in
Table 1.
The percentage of the performed errors in respect of the three
target distances was 11 10%, 12 13% and 20 10% for
indoor walkers and 2 19%, +2 17% and 2 16% for outdoor

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M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

Fig. 1. The two experimental environments: indoor (above) and outdoor (below). The two grounds were similar in dimensions (indoor: 18 m 4 m; outdoor: 18.4 m 4.4 m)
and paved by tiles similar in dimensions (indoor: 0.44 m 0.44 m; outdoor: 0.40 m 0.40 m), colours (light grey for both of them), and material.
The indoor environment is a long hall with two windows on the short sides, and doors on lateral long walls (kept closed during experiments). Distance between posterior
wall and starting line was 1.5 m, whereas the distance between the line of 10 m and frontal wall was 6.5 m.
The outdoor environment is a little paved place in the park of our hospital, encompassed by lawn. Its global dimensions are 18.4 m 8.4 m, however, a large strip (0.4 m)
formed by marble slab (different in colour from the surrounding tiles) divided it into a side large 3.6 m and another one, in which experiments were conducted, of 4.4 m.
Distance between posterior border and starting line was 2 m, and between the line of 10 m and anterior border was 6.4 m. The most close obstacles were trees, distant more
than 20 m further the line of 10 m along the walking line and more than 8 m on the left side of subjects.

walkers (for 3 m, 6 m and 10 m, respectively). Higher errors were

hence observed indoors and higher inter-subjects variability outdoors. In fact, the standard deviations observed for the errors
performed outdoors were generally higher than the ones observed
indoors. This difference in terms of variance resulted signicant
for the distance of 3 m as revealed by Levenes homogeneity tests
(p = 0.026, Table 1).

A repeated measure ANOVA showed that errors were signicantly affected by the environment (between subject factor,
main means: 1.02 1.04 m indoor vs 0.03 1.11 m outdoor,
p < 0.001), by the distance (within subject factor: p = 0.001), and by
the interaction of these two factors (p = 0.003, as detailed in Table 1).
In fact, the undershooting was higher indoor and for longer distances, as shown in Fig. 3. When the errors were evaluated in terms

Fig. 2. Antero-posterior accelerometric signal for a male subject enrolled in the experiment 2 during the rst trial of 6 m test performed indoor. The methods to compute
gait spatio-temporal parameters from this signal and measured walked distance (WD) are reported for this exemplicative case.

M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

Fig. 3. Mean and standard deviation of the error recorded for indoor (black circles)
and outdoor walkers (grey circles) during blindfolded walking of experiment 1. The
error was dened as the differences between walked distance (WD) and real distance
to walk (RD), in respect of the three tested distances. Circles are joined by a 2nd
order polynomial t. Stars indicated a p < 0.008 (=0.05/6 for Bonferronis correction
on six comparisons) obtained by one-sample two-tail t-tests performed to assess
the difference from an ideal error of 0.

of percentage of the distance to walk, they resulted affected only

by the environment.
The environment did not signicantly affect the step numbers,
the time spent walking and the step frequency. Conversely, the
recorded walking speed and step length were signicantly higher
for outdoor walkers than for indoor ones (see Table 1 and Fig. 4).
Post hoc analyses (p-threshold set at 0.025 for Bonferronis correction) revealed that these differences resulted signicant for the
distances of 10 m (walking speed: p < 0.001; step length: p = 0.004)
and 6 m (p = 0.022; p = 0.007), but not for that of 3 m (p = 0.057;
p = 0.175). Different mean velocities were also observed among the
three distances (effect of distance: p < 0.001), with the slowest one
recorded for the distance of 6 m both indoors and outdoors, as evident in Fig. 4. This gure shows that for both indoor and outdoor
subjects, higher walking speed and step length were associated to
longer walked distances.
3.2. Effects of environment and vision on 10 m walking
During open eyes walking towards a visible target (a task performed after blindfolded walking), the analyses (repeated measure
analyses of variance reported in Table 2, relevant post hoc analyses in Table 3) showed the absence of signicant differences
between indoor and outdoor walkers in terms of spatio-temporal

127

gait parameters, upper body stability and gait rhythmicity. Conversely, when visual information was removed, signicantly lower
values of spatio-temporal parameters were observed in indoor
walkers.
The indoor walkers performed errors signicantly correlated
with their walking speed (R = 0.55, p = 0.034): slower was their gait,
shorter was the walked distance, undershooting the target. On the
other hand, the outdoor errors resulted signicantly correlated only
with the number of steps (R = 0.63, p = 0.013), and not with the other
parameters, such as the walking speed (R = 0.44, p = 0.104).
Lower upper body accelerations along the three body axes were
recorded for blindfolded indoor walkers, related to their reduced
WS, in respect of blindfolded outdoor walkers. In terms of gait
rhythmicity, it is noteworthy the signicant interaction of environment and vision on the HR in LL direction. During open eyes walking
it was higher for indoor than outdoor walkers (see Tables 2 and 3),
the opposite occurred in blindfolded condition, with all the three
HR values quite higher outdoors than indoors.
Neither the number of steps nor the time spent walking resulted
signicantly different between indoor and outdoor walkers (see
Table 2). For the distance of 10 m, indoor walkers performed a
number of steps not signicantly different in closed and open eyes
conditions (post hoc analysis: 15.7 1.4 vs 16.4 2.4, p = 0.215).
Conversely, participants took a longer amount of time to walk to
the target while blindfolded than when walking under visual control (post hoc analysis: 11.1 1.5 s vs 9.1 0.9 s, p < 0.001). For the
same distance, outdoor walkers implied more steps and more time
when blindfolded than when supported by vision (closed vs open
eyes: number of steps = 17.1 2.6 steps vs 15.1 1.6 steps with
open eyes, p = 0.020; time = 10.6 2.5 s vs 8.5 1.1 s, p = 0.007).
4. Discussion of experiment 1
Indoor and outdoor walkers did not show any differences when
walking for 10 m under visual control. Conversely, many differences were recorded when they were asked to walk blindfolded.
Outdoor walkers were, in mean, accurate into walking to a memorized target, in accordance with previous studies [3,5]. On the
contrary, indoor walkers systematically undershot the target. The
easiest explication of this behaviour could be the fear to hit one
of the indoor walls. Furthermore, we tested nave subjects without any experience of blindfolded walking in the two experimental
environments [3]. It has been shown that the given practice, sometimes at great length before testing, could imply learning or a
reduction of fear on the subjects during the recorded performance
[19].
The closeness of indoor lateral walls and the fear to hit one of
them could imply a shorter distance walked by our blindfolded

Table 1
Effects of environment and distance on subjects performances and gait spatio-temporal parameters.
Tests on 3 m, 6 m, 10 m
blindfolded

Environment
(indoor vs outdoor)

Distance
(3 m; 6 m; 10 m)

Interaction
Environment
Distance

Leuvenes test
p-value

3m

6m

10 m

Performance

Error [m]
Error [%]
Time
N steps

15.69
13.10
0.09
0.81

<0.001
0.002
0.769
0.376

10.07
2.15
192.77
331.59

0.001
0.126
<0.001
<0.001

6.44
1.17
0.82
0.46

0.003
0.318
0.445
0.636

0.026
0.026
0.144
0.116

0.460
0.460
0.554
0.190

0.120
0.120
0.427
0.999

Spatio-temporal
parameters

SF
SL
WS

3.19
10.52
12.54

0.085
0.003
0.001

2.41
253.34
181.51

0.100
<0.001
<0.001

1.33
1.87
3.68

0.274
0.164
0.031

0.071
0.427
0.216

0.692
0.526
0.420

0.258
0.530
0.088

Results of repeated measures ANOVA on indoor vs outdoor data (F[1,28] for environment, F[2,56] for distance and interaction between environment and distance) for the
distances of 3 m, 6 m and 10 m. The measured parameters were: error (reported in meters and percentage of the distance to walk), time spent walking to complete the task,
number of performed steps (N steps), step frequency (SF), step length (SL), walking speed (WS). The last three columns reported the p-values of the Levenes homogeneity
tests performed to compare the variances between indoor and outdoor walkers for each one of the three distances. In bold the p-values <0.05.

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M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

Fig. 4. Correlations between walked distance (WD) and (A) walking speed (WS, above) and (B) step length (SL, below) during blindfolded walking indoors (black markers)
and outdoors (grey markers) for the three possible distances: 3 m (squares), 6 m (empty circles) and 10 m (lled circles) in the experiment 1. Regression lines were showed
in gure for each one of the six conditions: indoors (black lines) and outdoors (grey lines) per 3 distances. The value of Pearsons correlation coefcient R was shown for each
correlation. The correlation was signicant (p < 0.05) if R > 0.51.

Table 2
Effects of environment and vision support on subjects performances, gait spatio-temporal parameters, and upper body accelerations.
Tests on 10 m

Environment
(indoor vs outdoor)

Vision
(eyes open vs
blindfolded)

Leuvenes test
p-value

Interaction
Environment
Vision

Eyes open

Eyes closed

Performance

Error
Time
N steps

14.05
1.22
0.01

0.001
0.279
0.957

19.98
29.25
8.44

<0.001
<0.001
0.007

14.05
0.01
2.00

0.001
0.975
0.168

0.362
0.904

0.120
0.427
0.999

Spatio-temporal
parameters

SF
SL
WS

1.97
6.50
11.23

0.171
0.017
0.002

106.34
104.20
107.86

<0.001
<0.001
<0.001

6.95
6.73
5.73

0.014
0.015
0.024

0.147
0.685
0.206

0.424
0.530
0.088

RMS

AP
LL
CC

6.70
2.02
4.21

0.015
0.167
0.050

97.43
28.38
89.64

<0.001
<0.001
<0.001

10.02
5.38
11.04

0.004
0.028
0.002

0.988
0.447
0.928

0.187
0.119
0.038

RMSn

AP
LL
CC

5.24
1.04
2.67

0.030
0.316
0.113

107.38
29.92
98.36

<0.001
<0.001
<0.001

8.00
5.69
15.42

0.009
0.024
0.001

0.747
0.677
0.964

0.065
0.116
0.050

Harmonic ratio

AP
LL
CC

0.29
0.68
0.01

0.592
0.416
0.950

8.03
0.58
1.95

0.008
0.454
0.173

0.617
6.16
1.72

0.439
0.019
0.201

0.096
0.029
0.071

0.755
0.590
0.467

Results of repeated measures ANOVA on indoors vs outdoors data (F[1,28] for environment, F[2,56], with eyes open vs closed and interaction between environment and
vision) for the distances of 10 m. The measured parameters were: error, time spent walking to complete the task, number of performed steps (N steps), step frequency
(SF), step length (SL), walking speed (WS), accelerations root mean square (RMS), normalized acceleration RMS (RMSn) and harmonic ratio along the three body axes (AP:
antero-posterior; LL: latero-lateral; CC: cranio-caudal). The last two columns reported the p-values of the Levenes homogeneity tests performed to compare the variances
between indoor and outdoor walkers for each one of the two vision conditions. In bold the p-values <0.05.

M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

129

Table 3
Parameter values and post hoc analyses for the distance of 10 m with eyes open and closed condition.
Tests on 10 m

Eyes open walking

Indoor

Outdoor

Blindfolded walking
p

Indoor

Outdoor

1.99 1.03
11.13 1.53
16.40 2.41

0.17 1.56
10.64 2.52
17.07 2.63

p
0.001

Performance

Error [m]
Time [s]
N steps

9.070.87
15.73 1.44

8.55 1.11
15.13 1.55

Spatio-temporal
parameters

SF [1/s]
SL [m]
WS [m/s]

1.74 0.12
0.64 0.06
1.11 0.11

1.78 0.13
0.67 0.07
1.19 0.17

0.383
0.262
0.157

1.48 0.12
0.49 0.07
0.73 0.11

1.63 0.21
0.58 0.08
0.95 0.18

0.005
0.004
<0.001

RMS

AP [m/s2 ]
LL [m/s2 ]
CC [m/s2 ]

1.71 0.35
1.57 0.40
2.82 0.67

1.86 0.41
1.55 0.43
2.79 0.75

0.283
0.943
0.895

1.14 0.21
1.10 0.24
1.49 0.38

1.53 0.39
1.38 0.45
2.21 0.67

0.002
0.046
0.001

RMSn

AP
LL
CC

0.89 0.17
0.81 0.15
1.45 0.25

0.88 0.15
0.75 0.22
0.33 0.31

0.960
0.394
0.227

1.06 0.23
1.03 0.20
1.37 0.20

1.01 0.23
0.92 0.29
1.45 0.35

0.452
0.209
0.452

Harmonic
ratio

AP
LL
CC

8.01 3.10
4.27 3.11
8.89 3.23

7.54 1.89
2.81 0.81
9.48 2.48

0.089

6.15 2.07
2.91 1.25
7.67 3.23

6.31 1.78
3.53 0.99
9.36 3.35

0.056

Mean and standard deviations of computed parameters for the distance of 10 m under shut and open eyes conditions for indoor and outdoor walkers in the experiment 1
and the p-value of post hoc analyses obtained by comparing the values recorded in the two environments. The measured parameters were: error, time spent to complete the
task walking, number of performed steps (N steps), step frequency (SF), step length (SL), walking speed (WS), acceleration root mean square (RMS), its corresponding values
normalized for WS (RMSn), and harmonic ratio (HR). These last three parameters were computed along the three body axes: antero-posterior (AP), latero-lateral (LL) and
cranio-caudal (CC). In bold the p-values <0.025 for Bonferronis correction.

subjects. However, although this fear could play an important role,

it does not completely explain the undershooting. In fact, this possible fear does not clarify why subjects undershot the distance of
3 m (walking for 2.7 m) and that of 6 m (walking a mean distance of
5.3 m) even though they covered a distance of 8 m when the actual
target distance was 10 m. Furthermore, only an error of around 30
in the direction of walking could imply an impact with the wall
when subjects were asked to walk for 3 m.
Their fear to hit a wall and the need of maintaining an adequate
upper body stability even without vision support are conceivably
related to their observed walking speed reduction. Furthermore,
their reduced walking speed and step length resulted related to the
performed errors. However, it was found that blindfolded walkers,
when they were asked to walk slowly, walked further, whereas
at faster velocity they walked a somewhat shorter distance [3,15].
We found an opposite trend between walking speed and covered
distance. It should be noted that our walkers self-chose to reduce
their walking speed and step length, and they were not asked to do
it.
Our indoor subjects carried out shorter steps, but they did not
compensate it by increasing the number of steps. It resulted into a
shortened (and not a longer) walked distance. Also Philbeck et al.
[19] found longer walking responses when the participants gained
condence with the task and spontaneously tended to walk faster.
So, the linkage between velocity and blind-walking performances
seems dependent on whether or not participants walk at a selfselected speed.
The error observed in our indoor subjects can be probably inuenced by their fear, but it might be due to other possible causes. The
rst of them is the possibility that subjects may underestimate the
indoor distance. For this reason, we have investigated this aspect
in the rst task of experiment 2.
5. Results of experiment 2
5.1. Distanceperception task
Gross errors were recorded when subjects were asked to verbally judge the observed distance. Only 1 indoor subject and 3
outdoor subjects rightly answered that the distance between them
and the target was 8 m. The most common responses were 5 m

indoors (6 subjects) and 10 m outdoors (5 subjects). Indoors, the

responses ranged from 3.5 to 12 m, and the distance was underestimated by 12 of 15 subjects. It implied an indoor perceived distance
signicantly lower than the real one (mean response: 6.2 2.3 m,
p = 0.008 one-sample two-tail t-test). Outdoors, the responses
ranged from 5 to 12 m: six subjects underestimated and six overestimated this distance. The mean outdoor response resulted not
signicantly different from the real one (mean response: 8.1 2.1,
p = 0.809) and signicantly different from that reported by indoor
walkers (F = 6.04, p = 0.020, one-way ANOVA).
In spite of this general association between perception and
action, the perceived distance was not signicantly related to anyone of the distances walked by the same subjects into the successive
tests (10 m test: R = 0.23, p = 0.410 indoors and R = 0.14, p = 0.618
outdoors; the mean error of the three repetitions of 6 m test:
R = 0.07, p = 0.816 indoors and R = 0.38, p = 0.167 outdoors).
5.2. Trial repetition task
To assess the reliability of motor performances, the two way random intra-class correlation coefcient (ICC(2,1)) was computed to
compare the intra- with the inter-subjects variability in the three
repetitions of 6 m-test. We found values of ICC(2,1) 0.7 for performance and spatio-temporal gait parameters, both indoors and
outdoors (see Table 4). These values are usually associated to a good
repeatability. This was conrmed by the fact that 42 out of the 60
participants resulted consistent into under- or overshooting all the
3 trials of the 6 m-test in the experiment 2 or into all the three
distances of experiment 1, as detailed in Table 5.
5.3. Trial without acoustic information
In order to analyse the effect of acoustic feedback, we compared the performances of the walkers when they had to walk
for 10 m wearing headphones generating white noise to mask
environmental acoustic cues with the related performances of the
walkers of experiment 1. An analysis of variance showed that
errors are affected by the main effect of the environment and
not by the main effect of acoustic features. As shown in Table 6,
the environment signicantly affected not only the performed
error (main means: 1.15 1.68 m indoors vs 0.24 1.56 m

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M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

Table 4
Repeatability of subjectsperformances and gait spatio-temporal parameters.

experiment 2. However, the motor response variability increased

among subjects when both visual and acoustic clues were excluded
(mean response: 0.31 1.83 m).
Finally, it is noteworthy that the number of performed steps was
the only parameter not signicantly affected neither by the environment (indoors: 17.0 3.7 steps; outdoors: 17.10 2.8 steps) nor
by acoustic features (environmental acoustic feedback: 17.4 3.9
steps; white noise: 16.7 2.5 steps).

ICC(2,1)

Repeatability Tests on
6 m blindfolded
Indoor

Outdoor

Performance

Error
Time
N steps

0.731
0.728
0.776

0.720
0.379
0.619

Spatio-temporal
parameters

SF
SL
WS

0.472
0.703
0.756

0.727
0.691
0.609

6. Discussion of experiment 2

Two way random intra-class correlation coefcient assessed for the three trials of
6 m test in experiment 2 on main spatio-temporal gait parameters: error, time spent
to complete the task walking, number of performed steps (N steps), step frequency
(SF), step length (SL), walking speed (WS). In bold ICC(2,1) 0.7.

Table 5
Repeatability of subjects errors.
Environment

Signs of motor error

Experiment 1

Indoor

+
++
+++

12
2
1
0

9
2
2
2

21
4
3
2

Outdoor

+
++
+++

5
3
2
5

6
4
2
3

11
7
4
8

Experiment 2

Total

The number of subjects who performed one of the reported series of motor error
are tabled. This series was related to the motor errors performed during the three
distances of the experiment 1 and the three trials of 6 m test of the experiment 2.
Positive (+) and negative () signs correspond to over- and under-shooting, respectively. The series of signs in table do not correspond to the temporally sequence of
trials, but only to the number of occurrences.

outdoors), but also the step length (0.53 0.09 m vs 0.58 0.08 m)
and the walking speed (0.76 0.13 m/s vs 0.88 0.17 m/s). Conversely, the acoustic feedback directly affected the time spent
to complete the task (10.88 2.06 s with environmental acoustic
feedback vs 12.46 2.81 s with white noise), the step frequency
(1.56 0.19 steps/s vs 1.41 0.20 steps/s) and the harmonic ratio
along cranio-caudal axis (8.52 3.69 vs 6.50 2.51; F[1,56] = 6.16,
p = 0.016). Also the interaction between environment and acoustic
features resulted signicantly affecting error, step length and walking speed. It was due to the fact that, in absence of acoustic feedback,
only the performances of indoor walkers changed (post hoc analysis: p = 0.004), and not that of outdoor walkers (p = 0.817). In fact,
the underestimation observed in the experiment 1 (1.99 1.03 m)
was signicantly reduced in the subjects hearing white noise during

It is known that people are usually more accurate when asked

to walk blindfolded to a memorized target than when asked to
verbally judge the distance between them and a target [28]. Furthermore, the accuracy in distance perception was already found
reduced in an indoor small environment, despite its richness of spatial cues [12]. Similarly, we found a general association between
underestimation and undershooting indoors. However, even if
poorer, verbal accuracy was expected to be correlated with motor
responses [18], but neither an agreement (i.e. similar percentage
values for verbal and motor errors) nor a signicant correlation
(i.e. a linear relationship) between them were observed in our
results.
Could be the underestimation of the target distance the reason
for the indoor undershooting? This hypothesis does not explain the
main reduction of undershooting when indoor acoustic information was eliminated. In this condition, the inter-subjects variability
highly increased, but on the average the performance surprisingly improved (whereas the mean error for outdoor walkers did
not signicantly change). Furthermore, the deprivation of environmental acoustic feedback altered the behaviour of subjects. When
indoor walkers were allowed to hear environmental sounds, they
undershot the target for all the three different distances of experiment 1 as well as for all the three trials of the 6 m-distance in
experiment 2 (probably subjects needed more than 5 repetitions
to improve their performance [19]). But when acoustic information was removed (for the distance of 10 m) the undershooting
was substantially reduced. It is noteworthy that the lack of acoustic cues mainly affected the parameters related to the timing of
locomotion, such as the step frequency and the gait rhythmicity
[8].
It could be possible that the surrounding acoustic features of
the indoor environment could act as distracters, but in that case
their elimination was expected to reduce the performance variability and not increasing it. Moreover, the positive role of auditory
cues for enhancing visual and motor performances [17,26] or for
guidance in blindness [2,25] has been already documented. Another
possible explanation is that sounds reected from nearby walls may

Table 6
Effects of environment and its acoustic cues on subjects performances and gait spatio-temporal parameters.
Tests on 10 m blindfolded

Environment
(indoor vs outdoor)

Acoustic features
(environmental vs
white noise)

Interaction
Environment
Acoustic features

Performance

Error
Time
N steps

5.22
0.33
0.14

0.026
0.569
0.908

3.79
5.99
0.55

0.057
0.018
0.463

5.23
0.04
0.14

0.026
0.851
0.511

Spatio-temporal
parameters

SF
SL
WS

2.36
4.81
9.27

0.130
0.032
0.004

9.36
2.49
1.28

0.003
0.120
0.263

2.85
4.14
8.08

0.097
0.047
0.006

Results of repeated measures ANOVA performed on all the 60 participants on the data recorded during the 10 m test performed blindfolded to investigate the main effects of
the environment (F[1,56], p), acoustic features (F[1,56], p) and their interaction (F[1,56], p). The measured parameters were: error, time spent walking to complete the task,
number of performed steps (N steps), step frequency (SF), step length (SL), walking speed (WS). In bold the p-values <0.05.

M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

enhance the fear to hit one of them, bringing towards a reduction

of step length and walked distance. Further studies, involving a
wider range of distances to walk and more specic tests are needed.
These should allow a deeper investigation on the role of the acoustic cues on the capacity of subjects to walk blindfolded towards a
memorized target. Also they should clarify if the reduced undershooting was a consequence of a better assessment of the walked
distance or was more related to the adoption of a different motor
strategy.
Interestingly, the number of performed steps was similar for
each specic distance for all the investigated conditions. Although
the differences between explicit awareness and actions were
already highlighted [29], it was hypothesised that the perception
of a distance could be affected by the intended action to traverse
it, and not solely by optical and oculomotor information related to
the geometry of the environment [24,30].

7. General discussion
7.1. Different performances in different environments
The aim of this study was to investigate if the surrounding environment could affect the capacity to walk towards a memorized
target without the visual support. The most striking result was
that although healthy subjects were accurate in an open outdoor
eld, as it could be expected [3,5,15], they undershot the target
in an indoor small environment. It was a surprising result because
the elimination of some environmental cues increased the performance variability among subjects, but, on the average, it improved
their performance.
In fact, in an indoor room, rich of informative cues related to spatial layout, such as doors and windows, subjects underestimated
the targetdistance and undershot it walking blindfolded. On the
contrary, in an outdoor environment, poor of informative cues,
their performances were, on the average, more accurate, even if
more variable among subjects (as shown by higher variances and
lower values of intra-class correlation coefcient). Analogously,
when indoor walkers could not access to environmental acoustic
cues, their performances became more accurate, but more variable
among subjects.
Gross errors were recorded in the judgement of a distance in
terms of conventionally used metrics (m). However, verbal and
motor performances were not signicantly correlated. And the
underestimation of the indoor distance could not explain the reduction of undershooting in absence of acoustic cues. Even if the role
played by distance estimation needs further studies, our results
seem in agreement with the idea that people were not able to
describe the environment scaling it in arbitrary, unspecied units
(even if commonly used, as meters). But they could be able to transform it into units related to intended actions, such as the number
of steps needed to travel a seen distance [30]. So, the memorized
distance can be evaluated in terms of number of steps needed to
achieve the target.
However, when the subjects were blindfolded, they performed
shorter steps than those performed with open eyes (especially
indoors). It implied that the number of steps needed to be
increased, as outdoor walkers did. Conversely, indoor walkers did
not change their number of steps in open vs closed eyes condition, in spite of their step length reduction when blindfolded.
Moreover, the number of steps was the only parameter that did
not vary indoors between different conditions (with and without
visual feedback and/or with and without acoustic feedback). Conversely, the other gait spatial parameters seemed to be affected
by spatial layout features and the temporal ones by acoustic
features.

131

At this point, two issues need to be addressed: (1) the good

performance outdoors and (2) the undershooting indoors.
7.2. The good performance outdoors
In accordance with many previous studies, the average response
resulted accurate when the task was performed outdoors [3,14,15].
It implies that humans can be able to plan a proper motor strategy in an environment poor of informative cues to walk towards
a target even without visual control. Under less informative conditions (such as outdoor open eld or in absence of acoustic
feedback), subjects probably need to exploit only the internalized information to decide when they should stop themselves,
comparing the memorized distance and the self-evaluated walked
distance. The step length can be estimated by the locomotor body
schema [7], combining the internalized knowledge of body segment lengths with the continuously updated feedback about joint
angular range of motions provided by proprioceptive signals coming from mechanoreceptors in joints, skin, and muscles [10]. But
why did subjects seem unable to estimate or to take into account
their self-chosen step length reduction indoors?
7.3. The undershooting indoors
The undershooting of our indoor walkers is probably the most
surprising result of this study. Especially because the indoor
environment was expected to be more similar to the common conditions in which subjects could experience the blind walking during
real life.
The step length recorded indoors, when subjects walked blindfolded, was signicantly lower than the one outdoors. This step
length reduction could only be related to a generally reduction into
exo-extension range of motion [7], that can reduce proprioceptive
signals because they are weaker in the mid-range of motion than in
its extremities [10,27]. However, if the locomotor body schema was
used also indoors, the reduced signals should imply higher standard deviations, and not the indoor systematic error. In addition,
we observed that for outdoor walkers standard deviations were
higher than for indoor ones.
It should be noted that people usually walk without vision support only in small indoor environments. In these environments the
target could be a door, a light switch, a wardrobe or a bed. It means
that the target is like a nish-line to approach without crossing
it: the possibility of undershooting a closed door is less dangerous
than overshooting it. In these environments, subjects could also
use a tactile exploration, but this kind of explorative strategy, even
if safer, is more time consuming. On the other hand, in real situations, subjects could combine exploitation and exploration [5].
They could walk forward exploiting their memorized information,
but in a conservative manner to avoid possible hitting with the target, and then shifting to a feedback based strategy, using tactile
or even acoustic exploration once in proximity of the target. This
hypothesis obviously needs further investigations, but our results
seemed to support it. Our subjects resulted able to compute the
correct number of steps needed to achieve the target indoors, but
they performed shorter steps, that could be a safe strategy to avoid
overshooting and to reduce the effects of an eventual impact. This
behaviour could lead to a less accurate but more reliable motor
response. In fact, it does not need an online continuous updating of
body position based on the estimation of step length and a consequent adaptation of the step number. Also Dominici et al. [7] found
an undershooting of the target when subjects walked on stilts,
and authors hypothesized that their subjects probably planned a
reduced number of expected (but not real) longer steps. This planning might avoid the need of an online use of the locomotor body

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M. Iosa et al. / Behavioural Brain Research 226 (2012) 124132

schema during the task, reserving more attention to the external

feedbacks than to the internal computations.
Subjects could prefer this kind of cautious strategy under quite
dangerous conditions, such as walking indoors or on stilts. Conversely, when environmental cues are not available, subjects could
need to shift towards a predictive and less conservative strategy.
7.4. Conclusions
Although further studies are needed to verify the above
hypotheses, they are in line with previous studies about trade-off
between exploration needing sensory feedbacks and exploitation
based on internal representation of external world. The environment can affect this trade-off, implying a selective tuning between
different strategies [4,22].
Even though, further studies are needed to deeply investigate the role of different environmental characteristics, our results
clearly showed that the surrounding environment inuenced the
performance of subjects asked to walk towards a memorized target. When less cues were available, participants seem to rely more
on information related to body mechanics and body feedbacks to
accurately complete the task. Conversely, in a small indoor environment rich of environmental cues, subjects seem to perceive the
target as a nish-line to not overshoot.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Italian Ministry of Health and
by our Foundation. We are grateful to Chiara Felici for her support
and English editing of this manuscript.
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