Influence of a dual-task condition on toe-obstacle distance of stepping over an obstacle by elderly people who had a fall experience in the past year.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of a dual-task condition on toe-obstacle distance of stepping over an obstacle by elderly people who had a fall experience in the past year. The subjects were 30 young women and 30 community-dwelling elderly women. In addition, 30 community-dwelling elderly women were divided 7 people who had a history of falls and 23 people who had no history of falls in the past year by based on interview results. We measured stepping over parameter the single and dual tasks. The single task was a solitary motor task. The dual task consisted of a motor task and a concurrent cognitive task. The motor task was stepping over a 2-cm high wooden obstacle that was 80 cm wide, and 15 cm deep, which was set up in the middle of a 9-m walkway during comfortable gait, and the cognitive task was the serial subtraction of seven from 100. Two-way ANOVA showed that toe-obstacle distance had a significant interaction between the group and condition, and in elderly people group who had a fall experience, toeobstacle distance in dual tasks condition was significantly decreased contrasting by that in single task condition. These results suggest that young women, non-fallers and fallers may have different strategies fallers for stepping over an obstacle