Memorizing while walking: Increase in dual-task costs from young adulthood to old age.

Abstract

The dual task of memorizing word lists while walking was predicted to become more difficult with age because balance and gait are in greater need of "attentional resources." Forty-seven young (ages 20-30 years), 45 middle-aged (40-50), and 48 old (60-70) adults were trained to criterion in a mnemonic technique and instructed to walk quickly and accurately on 2 narrow tracks of different path complexity.Then, participants encoded the word lists while sitting, standing, or walking on either track; likewise, speed and accuracy of walking performance were assessed with and without concurrent memory encoding. Dual-task costs increased with age in both domains; relative to young adults, the effect size of the overall increase was 0.98 standard deviation units for middle-aged and 1.47 standard deviation units for old adults. It is argued that sensory and motor aspects of behavior are increasingly in need of cognitive control with advancing age.The main purpose of this study was to test the prediction that the simultaneous execution of a challenging locomotion task-walking on a narrow track-and a memory task-memorizing a list of words-becomes increasingly difficult with advancing age. This prediction was motivated by the hypothesis that sensorimotor performance is increasingly in need of "attentional resources" (Craik & Byrd, 1982) with advancing age (Brown & Woollacott, 1998;Teasdale, Lajoie, Bard, Fleury, & Courtemanche, 1993; cf. Welford, 1958, pp. 186-187). As an illustration, imagine 20-yearold and 70-year-old pedestrians crossing a lively street corner. Because of losses in motor and sensory functioning, 70-year-old individuals will need, on average, to exert more attention to successfully perform this task than will 20-year-old individuals. As a consequence, one may hypothesize that they will be more likely than young adults to interrupt a conversation with another person while crossing the street.

Physical and mental effort disrupts the implicit sense of agency

“…Cognitive loading causes a reduction in balance and movement accuracy due to limited cognitive resource availability for motor awareness (Kannape et al, 2014;Lindenberger et al, 2000;Woollacott & Shumway-Cook, 2002). According to internal forward models of motor control, self-agency over an action occurs when motor predictions of the action and sensory consequences match (Blakemore et al, 2001;.…”

“…Moreover, studies concerning cognitive load, kinematics and motor awareness offer support to this prediction. Dual task paradigms employing mental arithmetic, memory tasks and fine motor movements during balance, gait, posture and walking tasks have shown reductions in motor control and motor awareness (Kannape, Barré, Aminian & Blanke, 2014;Lindenberger, Marsiske & Baltes, 2000;Woollacott & Shumway-Cook, 2002). Dual task performance models suggest that motor control and cognitive activity compete for cognitive resources (Huxhold, Li, Schmiedek & Lindenberger, 2006;Lacour, Bernard-Demanze & Dumitrescu, 2008).…”

Relations between aging sensory/sensorimotor and cognitive functions

“…In the field of cognitive aging, a growing interest in the relationship between cognitive and sensorimotor aging has prompted sensorimotor dual-task research that emphasizes cognitive issues such as reduced attentional capacity [38,42], or stimulus dependent interference effects [41]. In contrast to earlier studies, this literature has also examined more complex cognitive tasks such as walking while talking [29] or walking while memorizing words using mental imagery [31,38].…”

“…In contrast to earlier studies, this literature has also examined more complex cognitive tasks such as walking while talking [29] or walking while memorizing words using mental imagery [31,38].…”

“…A recent walking and memorizing study [38] was motivated by the link between sensorimotor and cognitive abilities observed in earlier correlational work [35]. Young and older adults were trained to perform a memorizing task and to walk quickly and accurately on either a simple or complex walking path.…”