▽TOP▽活動実績▽２００１年▽

(14)　Visual attention and eye movement during observing a patient in veteran physical therapists
　　　　　　and students of the physical therapy school
　　　　　　　11th European Conference on Eye Movements (ECEM11),S50,2001-8

　When the physical therapist observes a patient with motor paralysis for the evaluation of movement disorder, the point of visual attention was important for getting useful information. The visual attention points can be detected by observing eye movements. We investigated the eye movement and gazing point during observing a patient and the difference of them between veteran physical therapists (VPT) and students of physical therapy school (SPT). The subjects were 4 veteran physical therapists who worked more than 10 years and 5 students who were 1st year in the physical therapy school. They were requested to watch the video that showed the walking of the patient with right paralysis toward right and left at 5 times repeat. The eye movement and gazing point were recorded using NAC-V system eye mark recorder and those data were analyzed after the experiment. Paired t-test was used to analyze the difference in distribution of gazing point between VPT and SPT. In this experiment, we found that the trajectory of eye movement in VPT was systematic from the head to the foot and smoothly following the patient's walking. However, in SPT the trajectory was limited at the same or specific portion of the patient and intermittently. In the distribution of eye movement speed, VPTs had almost medium and slow speed of eye movements but SPTs had fast and slow speed of eye movements. The distribution of gazing points in VPTs was more wide spread (p<0.01). Those findings suggest that VPT observed systematically, widely and continuously the walking and got a lot of useful information about the patient. These data will help in the teaching the observing point and the skills of movement evaluation at the education of physical and occupational therapy.