Does surface slope affect dual task performance and gait? An exploratory study in younger and older adults.

An increased risk of falling is associated with changes in gait while dual-tasking. The degree to which gait stability is altered during walking is influenced by an individual's cognitive and postural capacity, and the difficulty of the presented tasks. However, it is unknown how greater walking task difficulty affects gait stability in younger and older adults when dual-tasking. The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of walking task difficulty on gait stability in younger and older adults while performing a difficult audiospatial task. Ten younger [mean (SD) age 30.8 (6.6) years; 5 women] and 10 older [66.8 (5.7) years; 6 women] healthy adults walked on a treadmill at their preferred walking speed [younger 4.8 (0.4) ms, older 4.5 (0.5) ms) on either a level, or downhill slope both with and without responding to an audiospatial task. Step width, step width SD and mediolateral centre of mass displacement were calculated to determine changes in gait, and response time and accuracy were calculated to determine secondary task performance. Results indicated that older adults displayed a consistently greater step width (p ≤ 0.015) and maintained their mediolateral centre of mass displacement (p > 0.05) while walking downhill and responding to the audiospatial task, compared to downhill walking only. In contrast, younger adults maintained a regular step width during both level and downhill dual-tasking compared to level and downhill walking only (p > 0.05), however displayed a lower mediolateral centre of mass displacement during level dual-task walking compared to level walking only (p = 0.013). When the difficulty of the walking task was greater, older adults increased their step width, which increased their stability.