Abstract
Two-button computer mouse users may exhibit sustained,
static finger lifting behaviours to prevent inadvertent
activations by avoiding finger pressure on the buttons,
which leads to prolonged, static finger extensor muscle
loading. One hundred graduate students were observed
during normal computer work in a university computer
facility to qualify and quantify the prevalence of
lifted finger behaviours and extended finger postures,
as well as wrist/forearm and grip behaviour, during
specific mouse activities. The highest prevalences
observed were 48% of the students lifted their middle
finger during mouse drag activities, and 23% extended
their middle finger while moving the mouse. In
addition, 98% of the students rested their wrist and
forearm (77%) or wrist only (21%) on the workstation
surface, and 97% had an extended wrist posture
(15degree sign-30degree sign) when using the mouse.
Potential applications of these findings include future
computer input device designs to reduce finger lifting
behaviour and exposures to risk factors of hand/forearm
musculoskeletal pain.
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