Mobile Phone Use during Gait: The Role of Perceived Prioritization and Executive Control

Abstract

(1) Background: Mobile phone use during gait is associated with adverse health outcomes, namely increased risk of pedestrian injury. Healthy individuals can voluntarily prioritize concurrent task performance, but the factors underlying the impact of phone use during walking remain largely unknown. Thus, the objective of this work was to evaluate the relationship between subjective (perceived) prioritization, cognitive flexibility and dual-task performance when using a mobile phone during walking. (2) Methods: Thirty young participants walked for one minute with and without reading or texting on a mobile phone, as well as reading or texting while sitting. Walking performance (kinematics) was recorded, as well as phone use (text comprehension, text read/written), mental workload, perceived prioritization (visual analog scale), and cognitive flexibility (trail-making test). (3) Results: Texting while walking was associated with larger decreases in gait speed, larger gait variability, higher mental workload, and lower text comprehension compared to reading. Perceived prioritization was associated with walking dual-task costs (DTCs) (r = 0.39–0.42, p < 0.04) when texting, and better cognitive flexibility was associated with lower gait DTCs when texting (r = 0.55, p = 0.002) but not reading. (4) Conclusions: The context-dependent link between perceived prioritization, cognitive flexibility, and walking DTCs promotes our understanding of the factors underlying texting-while-walking performance. This could identify individuals who are more prone to dual-task interference in this increasingly common and dangerous task.

Prefrontal Cortex Brain Activation During Texting and Walking: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Feasibility Study

“…The current work identified similar increases in brain activation between serial-7 subtraction and TeWW, with the latter becoming an increasingly common, and thus learned task. In previous work, we identified a negative relationship between texting experience and gait DTCs in a larger sample of younger individuals (Krasovsky et al, 2021). Further research is warranted to examine how task novelty affects performance and brain activation for TeWW in different age groups.…”

“…Thus, TeWW represents an important health concern even in young healthy adults. TeWW is increasingly studied, demonstrating substantial cognitive-motor interference, that is, decreased gait speed, increased gait variability, and decreased texting speed and accuracy (Krasovsky et al, 2018(Krasovsky et al, , 2021.…”

Risks of Accidents Caused by the Use of Smartphone by Pedestrians Are Task- and Environment-Dependent

“…Previous studies report the risks of using a smartphone while walking [ 33 , 34 ]. The differential of this study among the others is that we evaluated participants in a non-controlled environment (public street), seeking to assess the impact of real traffic distractors.…”

The Role of Sleep Quality and Physical Activity Level on Gait Speed and Brain Hemodynamics Changes in Young Adults—A Dual-Task Study

“…We considered it important to use tasks similar to everyday life; therefore, as the smartphone is a massively used electronic device that can modify gait behavior [ 36 ], in this study, in the dual-task condition, the participants performed the cognitive task using a smartphone while walking. Based on previous studies [ 19 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ], the task protocol used in this research is the following:…”