Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference of gait adjustment between with and without fall experience elderly when stepping over an obstacle on a dual-task condition. The subjects were 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 2cm high wooden obstacle that was 80 cm wide, and 15 cm deep, which was set up in the middle of a 9m walkway during comfortable gait, and the cognitive task was the serial subtraction of seven from 100. We measured gait speeds, step length and step width in steady state condition and adjustment of stepping over obstacles. Two-way ANOVA showed that significant differences were found in step length and step width. These results suggest that non-fallers and fallers may have different strategies for stepping over an obstacle.
