Profiles of Cognitive-Motor Interference During Walking in Children: Does the Motor or the Cognitive Task Matter?

Abstract

The evidence supporting the effects of age on the ability to coordinate a motor and a cognitive task show inconsistent results in children and adolescents, where the Dual-Task Effects (DTE) – if computed at all – range from either being lower or comparable or higher in younger children than in older children, adolescents and adults. A feasible reason for the variability in such findings is the wide range of cognitive tasks (and to some extend of motor tasks) used to study Cognitive-Motor Interference (CMI). Our study aims at determining the differences in CMI when performing cognitive tasks targeting different cognitive functions at varying walking pathways. 69 children and adolescents (boys, n = 45; girls, n = 24; mean age, 11.5 ± 1.50 years) completed higher-level executive function tasks (2-Back, Serial Subtraction, Auditory Stroop, Clock Task, TMT-B) in comparison to non-executive distracter tasks [Motor Response Task (MRT), TMT-A] to assess relative effects on gait during straight vs. repeated Change of Direction (COD) walking. DT during COD walking was assessed using the Trail-Walking-Test (TWT). The motor and cognitive DTE were calculated for each task. There were significant differences between 5th and 8th graders on single gait speed on the straight (p = 0.016) and the COD pathway (p = 0.023), but not on any of the DT conditions. The calculation of DTEs revealed that motor DTEs were lowest for the MRT and highest for the TWT in the numbers/letters condition (p < 0.05 for all comparisons). In contrast, there were cognitive benefits for the higher-order cognitive tasks on the straight pathways, but cognitive costs for both DT conditions on the COD pathway (p < 0.01 for all comparisons). Our findings demonstrate that DT changes in walking when completing a secondary task that involve higher-level cognition are attributable to more than low-level divided attention or motor response processes. These results specifically show the direct competition for higher-level executive function resources important for walking, and are in agreement with previous studies supporting the cognitive-motor link in relation to gait in children. This might be in line with the idea that younger children may not have adequate cognitive resources.

Effects of dual tasking on postural and gait performances in children with cerebral palsy and healthy children

“…The hazard estimation process takes into account personal limitations and may impact the prioritization to a greater extent in the school‐aged children (Abbruzzese et al, 2014). Our results might confirm that healthy and CP children are able to exhibit healthy risk judgments (Schott and Klotzbier, 2018). In adults, the improvement of postural control could be attributed to a stiffening strategy (McNevin and Wulf, 2002) but we found less regular CoP fluctuations during dual‐tasking, suggesting higher degrees of freedom, a reduced attentional involvement in the postural regulation and thus greater automaticity while standing (Stins et al, 2011; Donker et al, 2007).…”

“…However, temporal and spatial parameters can still improve around 11–15 years, which can be explained by the continuing development of the nervous system and the changes of the anthropometric characteristics (Hausdorff et al, 1985). During childhood, some inconsistent results in dual‐task conditions have also been obtained in postural control (Ruffieux et al, 2015) and walking performances (Schott and Klotzbier, 2018; Saxena et al, 2017; Schaefer et al, 2015). (Olivier et al (2008)) showed an improvement of standing in children aged 4–11 years while watching a movie.…”

“…The decline of standing and walking performances observed in all groups (except in adults during standing) indicates that motor and cognitive tasks interfere with each other. Automaticity depends heavily on motor task difficulty (Schott and Klotzbier, 2018). Our findings suggested that the development of executive processes involved in the Stroop interference may proceed during healthy and pathological childhood (Adleman et al, 2002) and/ or that healthy and CP children may require some practice of dual‐tasking to develop an efficient division of attentional resources and thus postural/walking improvement.…”

Gamificación basada en un videojuego que permite desarrollar tareas de alta demanda cognitiva

“…De modo que, el juego logró incentivar al estudiante, establecer patrones que le permite crear un pensamiento crítico y más flexible, esto ayudó al estudiante a llegar a una satisfacción significativa, el juego Plants vs. Zombies produjo efectos positivos en las tareas de procedimientos con conexiones, de manera que el estudiante encuentra un buen escenario, capta la atención y ayuda en el cambio de comportamientos convirtiendo así al juego en una herramienta positiva (Terrell, 2016;Jacobs, 2016). Para alcanzar el rendimiento académico se debe desarrollar tareas motoras con ciertos grados de dificultad, de manera que mientras más difícil sea la tarea, mayor será el beneficio para desarrollar tareas de procedimientos con conexiones (Schott & Klotzbier, 2018).…”

Introducing a Dynamic Workstation in the Office: Insights in Characteristics of Use and Short-Term Changes of Well-Being in a 12 Week Observational Study

“…Interrupting the consistency of moving the pedals within one event of use may be a result of changing to tasks that require more or less concentration or precision. Depending on the task, it may be easier or more difficult to integrate the movement of the legs, solving the task and maintaining a good performance (e.g., taking a phone call, copying a text or using the mouse) [ 54 , 55 , 56 ]. This task-dependence could also explain our findings of a maximum standard deviation of 24.5 rpm, resulting from different speeds of moving while solving changing tasks with different demands.…”