The impact of visual patterns on human locomotion

Visual illusions are thought to affect perception but not action (Milner & Goodale, 2008). However, most actions studied concern ballistic hand movements and grasping, and there remains much debate around the question of how much and under which circumstances the visual perception system and the vision for action system interact (Kopiske et al., 2016). Furthermore, hardly anything is known about whether visual illusions impact walking. First evidence suggests that certain aspects of floor patterns (such as floor pattern orientation and frequency spacing) can influence locomotion characteristics, including lateral veer (Leonards et al., 2015) and walking speed (Ludwig et al., 2018). The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of different floor/wall pattern configurations on locomotion, including foot placement relative to the patterns, walking speed, regulation of gait and lateral veer in adult participants.