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OBJECTIVE: To examine the experience of people with Parkinson's disease when walking in different social situations, and improve understanding of how this affects participation in meaningful activity. METHODS: A convenience sample of fourteen people with Parkinson's disease and a history of gait dysfunction was recruited. In-depth interviews and direct observations were conducted in the participants' home environments. Specific examples from community mobility were reviewed using first person interviewing techniques with the support of video footage. Interview transcripts were analyzed using an interpretive phenomenological approach to derive key themes. RESULTS: The feeling of 'being looked at' (le regard des autres) was the central theme in participant discourse. This sentiment was inextricably linked to the given norms of the social setting, and the relationships between participants and others within that environment. Participants sought to manage how they were perceived by others through modification of posture/gait patterns; disclosure of their neurological disease; and avoidance/withdrawal from social situations. CONCLUSION: Further to the functional aspects of mobility, gait is important for maintaining self-image in people with Parkinson's disease. Affective gaze interactions have significant consequences upon participation restriction. These findings underscore the interest of activities which strengthen self-image and validate movement diversity in PD rehabilitation.

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Purpose: This study sought to characterize the way patients with Parkinson's disease consciously perceive and respond to their surroundings while walking in everyday situations.Method: A qualitative research program designed around an ecological data collection protocol was employed. A convenience sample of 14 patients with a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and a history of gait difficulties were recruited. Details regarding patients' subjective experience of walking in everyday environments were obtained using first person interviewing techniques with the support of video footage from their daily-life activity. Interview transcripts were analyzed using an interpretive phenomenological approach in order to derive key themes.Results: The sense of proximity and the way in which an individual perceived themselves with respect to their surroundings appeared central to the way patients organized their locomotor behavior. Further to this, the patient relationship to different features and obstacles appeared conditioned by prior experiences in those circumstances. Patients described managing gait difficulties by consciously regulating their walking trajectory and gaze with respect to their environment.Conclusion: Perceptual challenges, visual flow and the dynamic valence of features in the patient's surroundings may have important effects upon the gait stability of patients with Parkinson's disease and warrant further attention in planning rehabilitation interventions.Implications for rehabilitationWalking abilities of patients with Parkinson's disease should be conceptualized in terms of perceptuomotor coupling to a given environment.The functional significance of a patient's environment is dynamic and might be seen to vary in accordance with their physical capacities.Valency, or the subjective relationship between a patient and their surrounds, appears to be an important component of the "fit" between a person and their environment.Novel rehabilitation strategies for the management of parkinsonian gait disturbances might seek to integrate psychological, sensorimotor and environmental elements in order to have individually tailored, ecologically valid home assessment and community rehabilitation programs.

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This article sets out to identify the typical risky situations experienced by novice motorcyclists in the real world just after licensing. The procedure consists of a follow-up of six novices during their first two months of riding with their own motorbike instrumented with cameras. The novices completed logbooks on a daily basis in order to identify the risky situations they encountered, and were given face-to-face interviews to identify the context and their shortcomings during the reported events. Data show a large number of road configurations considered as risky by the riders (248 occurrences), especially during the first two weeks. The results revealed that a lack of hazard perception skills contributed to the majority of these incidents. These situations were grouped together to form clusters of typical incident scenarios on the basis of their similarities. The most frequent scenario corresponds to a lane change in dense traffic (15% of all incidents). The discussion shows how this has enhanced our understanding of novice riders' behaviour and how the findings can improve training and licensing. Lastly, the main methodological limitations of the study and some guidelines for improving future naturalistic riding studies are presented. Practitioner Summary: This article aims to identify the risky situations of novice motorcyclists in real roads. Two hundred forty-eight events were recorded and 13 incident scenarios identified. Results revealed that a lack of hazard perception contributed to the majority of these events. The most frequent scenario corresponds to a lane change in dense traffic.

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This paper analyses motorcycle educational content in a number of French motorcycle schools on the basis of a naturalistic study of riders' and trainers' behaviour. The aim is to specify the situations delivered in motorcycle schools and to study the rider's activity in these situations. The methodology includes ethnographic observation within the motorcycle schools and the longitudinal monitoring of 14 trainee motorcyclists during their initial training. The training situations were described by the combination of audio-visual recordings and interviews data (i.e. concomitant or interruptive verbalization, and self-confrontation data). The results permit to (1) compare the "real" and "official" durations of track and on-road training, (2) characterize the real training situations, (3) describe the preferred forms of instruction, and (4) conduct an in-depth analysis of the situations used during training in traffic. The discussion show, in first, the poverty of the training situations which are based on the repetition of the exercises in the test, and, in second, disparities between the riding situations encountered during training and the demands made by riding in natural traffic. The usefulness and the applications of this type of approach--based on the integration of the rider's point of view notably by self-confrontation interview--for understanding real riding behaviours and how such approaches could supplement vehicle-based data are discussed in a large conclusion.

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