Effects of a secondary task on obstacle avoidance in healthy young adults

Abstract

Research studying attention and gait stability has suggested the process of recovering gait stability requires attentional resources, but the effect of performing a secondary task on stability during obstacle avoidance is poorly understood. Using a dual-task paradigm, the present experiment investigated the extent to which young adults are able to respond to a secondary auditory Stroop task (requiring executive attentional network resources) concurrently with obstacle crossing during gait as compared to performing unobstructed walking or sitting (control task). Our results demonstrated that as the level of difficulty in the postural task increased, there was a significant reduction in verbal response time from congruent to incongruent conditions in the Stroop task, but no differences in gait parameters, indicating that these postural tasks require attention, and that young adults use a strategy of modulating the auditory Stroop task performance while keeping stable gait performance under the dual-task situations. Our findings suggest the existence of a hierarchy of control within both postural task (obstacle avoidance requires the most information processing resources) and dual-task (with gait stability being a priority) conditions.

Effects of Gait Variations on Grip Force Coordination During Object Transport

“…Allocation of attentional resources to a secondary task (transporting the object) may have been reduced during altered gait, and as a consequence this may have affected grip-inertial force precision, similar to performance decrements shown in other dual-task performances (e.g., Chen et al 1996;Müller et al 2004;Siu et al 2008;Sternad et al 2007;Weerdesteyn et al 2003). Even though grip force oscillation are usually not consciously perceived (Flanagan et al 1993), subjects may still be susceptible to temporal decrements related to the overall attention demands of a task.…”

“…Effects of gait variations on grip force coordination during object transport. J Neurophysiol 100: 2477-2485, 2008. First published August 27, 2008doi:10.1152/jn.90561.2008.…”

Effects of dual tasking on the postural performance of people with and without multiple sclerosis: a pilot study

“…Thus, the Stroop task was sufficient to compete with the processing demands of the postural tasks. This study's auditory Stroop task has been used to evaluate dual-task effects on gait in healthy young adults as well as older adults with and without balance impairments [33][34][35]. The findings of these studies vary, such that dual-task costs depend on the complexity of the gait tasks, may affect either Stroop performance or gait performance, and are dependent on how the subjects prioritize performance toward either the Stroop task or the gait task.…”

Adaptive Locomotion for Crossing a Moving Obstacle

“…When crossing an obstacle, individuals modulate the effector system according to obstacle characteristics (Mohagheghi, Moraes & Patla, 2004;Siu et al, 2008). Young adults modulate the take off distance, toe clearance, and gait speed according to the obstacle features (Patla, Prentice & Gobbi, 1996;Bradshaw & Sparrow, 2001;Krell & Patla, 2002;Mohagheghi, Moraes & Patla, 2004).…”