Goh HT, Pearce M, Vas A. Task matters: an investigation on the effect of different secondary tasks on dual-task gait in older adults.
BMC Geriatr 2021;
21:510. [PMID:
34563129 PMCID:
PMC8465774 DOI:
10.1186/s12877-021-02464-8]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2021] [Accepted: 08/29/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Background
Dual-task gait performance declines as humans age, leading to increased fall risk among older adults. It is unclear whether different secondary cognitive tasks mediate age-related decline in dual-task gait. This study aimed to examine how type and difficulty level of the secondary cognitive tasks differentially affect dual-task gait in older adults.
Methods
Twenty young and twenty older adults participated in this single-session study. We employed four different types of secondary tasks and each consisted of two difficulty levels, yielding eight different dual-task conditions. The dual-task conditions included walking and 1) counting backward by 3 s or by 7 s; 2) remembering a 5-item or 7-item lists; 3) responding to a simple or choice reaction time tasks; 4) generating words from single or alternated categories. Gait speed and cognitive task performance under single- and dual-task conditions were used to compute dual-task cost (DTC, %) with a greater DTC indicating a worse performance.
Results
A significant three-way interaction was found for the gait speed DTC (p = .04). Increased difficulty in the reaction time task significantly increased gait speed DTC for older adults (p = .01) but not for young adults (p = .90). In contrast, increased difficulty level in the counting backward task significantly increased gait speed DTC for young adults (p = .03) but not for older adults (p = .85). Both groups responded similarly to the increased task difficulty in the other two tasks.
Conclusions
Older adults demonstrated a different response to dual-task challenges than young adults. Aging might have different impacts on various cognitive domains and result in distinctive dual-task gait interference patterns.
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