Human Postural Stability During Dog Walking by Adults with Intellectual Disability

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether ornot walking a dog can increase stability in the walkingperformance of individuals with intellectual disability (ID).Individuals walked on a narrow balance beam, while a dogwalked parallel to them on a narrow bench. Task manipu- lations included walking with normal vision (FV) and whileblindfolded (BF), and walking with (WD) and without a dog (ND). When walking blindfolded on a narrow surface withaccompanying dog, the participants showed better pos- tural stability and gait regularity than when walking with- out a dog. Therefore, we concluded that the ID individualswere able to use the dog s leash to detect haptic proper- ties in order to achieve postural control (e.g., stability inspeed performance) while walking.