Preliminary Evidence That Design Fluency Is Related to Dual-Task Treadmill Gait Variability in Healthy Adults
Date
2024-09-12
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
NeuroSci
Abstract
Evidence supporting a link between gait and cognition is accumulating. However, the relation between executive functioning and spatiotemporal gait parameters has received little attention. This is surprising since these gait variables are related to falls. The goal of this preliminary study was to determine whether performance on measures of inhibition, reasoning, and fluency is related to variability in stride length and step width during dual-task treadmill walking in a sample of healthy adults. Nineteen healthy adults averaging 40 years of age were evaluated. Results indicated that processing speed was reduced, t(18) = 6.31, p = 0.0001, step width increased, t(18) = −8.00, p = 0.0001, and stride length decreased, t(18) = 3.06, p = 0.007, while dual tasking, but variability in gait parameters did not significantly change, consistent with a gait/posture-first approach. As hypothesized, better performance on a visual design fluency task which assesses cognitive flexibility was associated with less dual-task stride length variability, rs(17) = −0.43, p = 0.034, and step width variability, r = −0.56, p = 0.006. The results extend previous findings with older adults walking over ground and additionally suggest that cognitive flexibility may be important for gait maintenance while dual tasking.
Description
This article was originally published in NeuroSci. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/neurosci5030026.
© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords
gait, dual task, fluency, cognitive flexibility
Citation
Higginson, Christopher I., Morgan K. Bifano, Kelly M. Seymour, Rachel L. Orr, Kurt M. DeGoede, and Jill S. Higginson. 2024. "Preliminary Evidence That Design Fluency Is Related to Dual-Task Treadmill Gait Variability in Healthy Adults" NeuroSci 5, no. 3: 328-338. https://doi.org/10.3390/neurosci5030026