Changes of locomotion in old age depend on task setting.

Background: Laboratory settings may differ from everyday life with respect to factors such as attention, motivation, intention, and self-efficacy. Since those factors are likely to influence subjects' performance on locomotor tasks, we evaluated whether the age-related changes of locomotion previously observed under laboratory conditions are equally present in a real life-like scenario.

Methods: 15 young and 15 older subjects walked along a marked path of 25 m length and 0.3m width in a laboratory environment. 14 young and 13 older subjects walked in a community park along a 3 km path, with a straight and level registration section located after 1.5 km.

Results: Step duration was longer, angular limb excursion was smaller, and the spatio-temporal gait variability was higher in the laboratory than in the park. Analysis of co-variance revealed that these changes cannot be traced back to a single cause. The variability of step duration and of limb excursion increased in old age under laboratory conditions, but only the latter parameter increased under real life-like conditions.

Discussion: Our laboratory setting destabilized the gait pattern more than our real life-like setting, thus accentuating age-related changes.