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Task specificity impacts dual-task interference in older adults

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Abstract

Background

Task prioritization is an important factor determines the magnitude and direction of dual-task interference in older adults. Greater dual-task cost during walking may lead to falling, sometimes causing lasting effects on mobility.

Aims

We investigated dual-task interference for walking and cognitive performance.

Methods

Twenty healthy, older adults (71 ± 5 years) completed three cognitive tasks: letter fluency, category fluency, and serial subtraction during seated and walking conditions on a self-paced treadmill for 3 min each, in addition to walking only condition. Walking speed, step length and width were measured during walking and each dual-task condition.

Results

Comparing the percentage of correct answers in cognitive tasks across single and dual-task conditions, there was a main effect of cognitive task (p = 0.021), showing higher scores during letter fluency compared to serial subtraction (p = 0.011). Step width was significantly wider during dual-task letter fluency compared to walking alone (p = 0.003), category fluency (p = 0.001), and serial subtraction (p = 0.007).

Discussion

During both fluency tasks, there was a cost for gait and cognition, with category showing a slightly higher cognitive cost compared to letter fluency. During letter fluency, to maintain cognitive performance, gait was sacrificed by increasing step width. During serial subtraction, there was a cost for gait, yet a benefit for cognitive performance.

Conclusion

Differential effect of cognitive task on dual-task performance is critical to be understood in designing future research or interventions to improve dual-task performance of most activities of daily living.

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Availability of data and material

As supplemental data.

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Angie Helseth and Taylor Leeder for their assistance in data collection and processing.

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (P20 GM109090 to JBB, JMY) and by SPiRE Award #I21RX003294 (to JMY) from the United States (U.S.) Department of Veterans Affairs." This is the languge requested from the funding source.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomechanics, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, 68182, USA

    Farahnaz Fallahtafti & Jennifer M. Yentes

  2. Department of Gerontology, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, 68182, USA

    Julie B. Boron & Hyeon Jung Kim

  3. Division of Physical Therapy Education, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, 68198, USA

    Dawn M. Venema

Authors
  1. Farahnaz Fallahtafti
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  2. Julie B. Boron
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  3. Dawn M. Venema
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Contributions

FF: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Software; Visualization; Writing—original draft; Writing—review and editing. DMV, and HJK: Methodology; Writing—review and editing. JY and JBB: Conceptualization; Funding acquisition; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Supervision; Writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Jennifer M. Yentes.

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All procedures were reviewed and approved by the University’s Institutional Review Board.

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After written consent was obtained, demographic data and medical history, for screening purposes, were collected for each participant.

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Fallahtafti, F., Boron, J.B., Venema, D.M. et al. Task specificity impacts dual-task interference in older adults. Aging Clin Exp Res 33, 581–587 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-020-01575-3

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