Effect of Walking Speed and Cognitive Load on Gait Stability in the Elderly

Since walking and other tasks are simultaneously among the most common human activities, and considering the fact that that a large part of the elderly falls are during two tasks, the purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of walking speed and cognitive load on gait stability in the elderly.

A total of 10 healthy volunteer elderly (5 males and 5 females) without a history of falls took part in the study. They were asked to perform 3 walking trails on a treadmill, including walking at 3 paces (preferred, fast, and slow) with/without cognitive load. Cognitive task was performed by subtracting 3's from a random three digit number. The gait-stability ratio (GSR) was calculated for each of the above conditions. Two-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to examine the mean differences at the significance level of 0.05.

The findings showed that the cognitive performance score decreases with increasing speed and at faster speeds, compared with speed with cognitive load, GSR was found to be higher (p<0.01).

The results showed that the elderly, through different walking strategies, especially the shorter phase, provide more dual support while walking, so that they will fall less with increasing steadiness.