Ageing effects on the attention demands of walking

Sparrow, W.A.; Bradshaw, Elizabeth; Lamoureux, Ecosse L.; Tirosh, Oren

doi:10.1016/s0167-9457(02)00154-9

Cited by 130 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…In older subjects, Sparrow et al (2002) found results that were similar to those of young adults in terms of walking speed; there were no significant differences or interactions in walking speed between the unconstrained walking and targeting task and between the baseline walking and dual-task. As well, there were no significant differences in walking speeds between young and older adults.…”

Section: Older Adultssupporting

confidence: 54%

175 Attentional Demands During a Goal Directed Blind Navigation Task in Young and Older Adults

Lajoie¹,

Paquet²,

Lafleur³

2010

Parkinsonism & Related Disorders

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Section: Older Adultssupporting

confidence: 54%

175 Attentional Demands During a Goal Directed Blind Navigation Task in Young and Older Adults

Lajoie¹,

Paquet²,

Lafleur³

2010

Parkinsonism & Related Disorders

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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: 95%

“…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: 91%

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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“…These negative consequences on mobility and safety are greater in older than in young adults, and suggest that walking is no longer automatic with aging: it requires additional attentional resources (e.g., Laessoe et al, 2008;Sheridan and Hausdorff, 2007) and the involvement of executive functions (for reviews, see Al-Yahya et al, 2011;Beurskens and Bock, 2012). Older adults have been shown to place priority on motor control during dual-task walking, so as to avoid falling but at the expense of walking speed (Hollman et al, 2007) or talking (for a review, see Beurskens and Bock, 2012;Sparrow et al, 2002). In this line, the greater declines of executive functions in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease (da Costa et al, 2013) may be why these medical conditions are strongly associated with a higher risk of falling (Delbaere et al, 2012;Sheridan and Hausdorff, 2007), a higher risk of being injured during street crossing (Gorrie et al, 2008) and navigation difficulties in real-life or simulator studies (e.g., Kliegel et al, 2007;Salthouse and Siedlecki, 2007;Taillade et al, 2013).…”

Section: Impact Of Cognitive Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of safety and mobility issues among older pedestrians

Tournier

Dommès²,

Cavallo³

2016

Accident Analysis & Prevention

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a b s t r a c tAlthough old people make up an extremely vulnerable road-user group, older pedestrians' difficulties have been studied less extensively than those of older drivers, and more knowledge of this issue is still required. The present paper reviews current knowledge of older-adult problems with the main components of pedestrian activity, i.e., walking and obstacle negotiation, wayfinding, and road crossing. Compared to younger ones, old pedestrians exhibit declining walking skills, with a walking speed decrease, less stable balance, less efficient wayfinding strategies, and a greater number of unsafe road crossing behaviors. These difficulties are linked to age-related changes in sensorial, cognitive, physical, and self-perception abilities. It is now known that visual impairment, physical frailty, and attention deficits have a major negative impact on older pedestrians' safety and mobility, whereas the roles of self-evaluation and self-regulation are still poorly understood. All these elements must be taken into consideration, not only in developing effective safety interventions targeting older pedestrians, but also in designing roads and cars. Recent initiatives are presented here and some recommendations are proposed.

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Ageing effects on the attention demands of walking

Cited by 130 publications

References 9 publications

175 Attentional Demands During a Goal Directed Blind Navigation Task in Young and Older Adults

175 Attentional Demands During a Goal Directed Blind Navigation Task in Young and Older Adults

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

Review of safety and mobility issues among older pedestrians

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