The influence of cognitive load and walking speed on gait regularity in children and young adults

Abstract

The dual-process account of sensorimotor-cognitive interactions postulates that easy cognitive tasks can lead to performance improvements in the motor domain (e.g., an increased stability while walking or balancing) across the lifespan. However, cross-domain resource competition can lead to performance decrements in motor tasks when the concurrent cognitive task is very difficult, and older adults have shown performance decrements in their motor functioning under such circumstances. Resource limitations are particularly pronounced not only in old adulthood, but also in childhood. The current study investigates the relationship of walking speed and cognitive load on walking regularity in 7- and 9-year olds and young adults, with 18 participants in each group. Participants were walking on a treadmill at their preferred speed, and with speeds that were 30% faster and 30% slower than preferred. Regularity of lower-body coordination was operationalized as the residual variance of principal component analyses performed on the data of a motion analysis system. All age groups showed a more regular gait with increasing walking speed. Young adults' gait regularity was not influenced by cognitive load, whereas children showed a U-shaped relationship of cognitive load and walking regularity, with the highest regularity when performing an easy cognitive task. It can be concluded that children are also influenced by cross-domain resources competition in challenging cognitive-motor dual-task situations.

Gait parameters are differently affected by concurrent smartphone-based activities with scaled levels of cognitive effort

“…Values of stride regularity closer to 1 indicate a more regular gait. A less regular gait has been linked to a less stable walking pattern [26]. …”

Effects of aging on the relationship between cognitive demand and step variability during dual-task walking

“…Besides its ecological validity, the strength of the dichotic listening task is twofold in the context of the dual-process account of cognitive-motor interactions Lövdén et al 2008;Schaefer et al 2015;Verrel et al 2009). First, the cognitive demand and effort parametrically increase from the NF to the FL condition (Hugdahl et al 2009).…”

Emergence of system roles in normative neurodevelopment

“…We can speculate that these results support a competition in the relative development of cognitive systems. Such a hypothesis adds a developmental component to the dual-process account of sensorimotor-cognitive interactions that posits a competitive nature to cognitive vs. sensorimotor load (28). Increasing modularization of the sensorimotor systems might therefore be critical to efficient overall cognitive performance on developmental time scales.…”