Upright Standing and Gait: Are There Changes in Attentional Requirements Related to Normal Aging?

Lajoie, Yves; Teasdale, Normand; Bard, Chantal; Fleury, Michelle

doi:10.1080/03610739608254006

Cited by 217 publications

(135 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Previous studies have confirmed that locomotion is not traditionally considered to be automatic, but instead requires minimal attentional resources to maintain or regain gait stability (Lajoie et al 1993;Lajoie et al 1996;Ebersbach et al 1995;Sparrow et al 2002;Beauchet et al 2005). Increased attentional resources may be required while performing a more challenging task such as obstacle avoidance with a secondary task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…A growing body of literature is showing that maintaining or regaining gait stability requires attentional resources, which provides additional evidence to support the concept that walking is not automatic but requires attentional resources (Lajoie et al 1993;Lajoie et al 1996;Sparrow et al 2002;Beauchet et al 2005). Attentional resources are assumed to be limited (Neumann 1984).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2007

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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.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2007

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“…Nevertheless, some recent investigations provided evidence that the regulation of posture, from the simplest task (i.e., orthostatic) to the most complex one (i.e., unipodal balance), also involves attentional processes (Woollacott and Shumway-Cook 2002;Vuillerme and Nougier 2004). The mobilization of these attentional resources depends on (1) the age (Teasdale and Simoneau 2001;Woollacott and Shumway-Cook 2002), (2) the available sensory information (Shumway-Cook and Woollacott 2000; Teasdale and Simoneau 2001), (3) the postural task complexity (Lajoie et al 1996), (4) the expertise (Vuillerme and Nougier 2004), and (5) the voluntary attentional focus on body sway (Vuillerme and Nafati 2007). Indeed, these last authors observed a degradation of postural stability when it was asked to adult subjects to focus their attention on their posture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of attentional focus on postural sway in children and adults

2008

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The present study examined, in children aged 4-11 and in adults, the postural control modifications when attention was oriented voluntary on postural sway. Since (1) there are less attentional resources in children than in adults, (2) the selective attention processing improves with age, i.e., children use a different strategy to focus their attention than adults, and (3) adults' postural stability decreases when attention is focused on postural sway, we hypothesized that postural stability was less affected in children than in adults when attention was focused on postural sway. Fourty four children aged 4-to 11-year-old and 11 adults participated in the experiments. The postural control task was executed in a Romberg position. Two experimental conditions were presented to the subjects, (1) to look at a video on a TV screen without instruction about the posture, and (2) to fixate a cross placed at the center of the TV screen with the instruction to remain as stable as possible. Postural performance was measured by means of a force platform. Results from this study (1) confirmed a non-monotonic improvement of postural stability during the ontogenetic period without reaching the adults' level at the age of 11, (2) suggested that children, aged 4-11, are able to focus their attention on the control of posture, and (3) showed that the automatic control of posture increases postural stability since the age of 4.

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“…Attention is defined as information processing capacity, space or resources of an individual 4,5) . Several studies [6][7][8] have shown that locomotion, although considered automatic, in fact requires some degree of attention. Furthermore, increased attention for standing and walking is required to compensate for age-related changes in the elderly, as compared to young adults.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of a Dual-Task on the Center of Pressure Trajectory of Healthy Young Adults during Obstacle Crossing

Kim

2009

J Phys Ther Sci

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Abstract.[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to examine the center of pressure (COP) trajectory and response time when young adults initiate gait and step over an obstacle while simultaneously performing a secondary Stroop task.[Subjects] Twenty healthy young adults (ten males and ten females) participated in the study.[Methods] The subjects first completed a Stroop task while standing (baseline) and then initiated gait and stepped over an obstacle at a self-paced speed with and without a secondary Stroop task. The response times to the secondary task and the COP trajectory were measured.[Results] The Stroop task response time in the stepping condition was the longest, followed by the times for initiating gait and standing conditions (p<0.01). There were main effects for both the Stroop task and stepping conditions for the mediolateral (M-L) displacement of the COP and the length of the COP path for both feet (p<0.01, respectively). However, there were no significant differences among the tasks for the anteroposterior (A-P) displacement of the COP for both feet. [Conclusion] This study suggests that divided attention degrades the obstacle avoidance abilities of healthy young adults and the apparently greater demand of postural control may prove as difficult for populations that are at risk of falling.

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Upright Standing and Gait: Are There Changes in Attentional Requirements Related to Normal Aging?

Cited by 217 publications

References 31 publications

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

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

Effects of attentional focus on postural sway in children and adults

The Effect of a Dual-Task on the Center of Pressure Trajectory of Healthy Young Adults during Obstacle Crossing

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