Changes in cognitive load and effects on parameters of gait

Abstract

Reading or texting with a mobile phone while walking requires cognitive resource allocation and consequently induces changes in gait. Fifty-six young adults walked along the GAITRite© walkway under baseline, low-, and high-cognitive loads. Participants’ Functional Ambulation Profile (FAP), velocity, and stride length decreased while double-support time increased under higher cognitive load. This result shows that during cognitively loaded multitasking conditions participants are unable to stabilize their gait. In addition, lower FAP scores across the conditions suggest an increased risk for future injurious falls. This study demonstrates that distracted walking using a mobile phone can affect several parameters of gait and it would be prudent to not read or text on a mobile phone while walking.

Keywords:

• cognitive resource allocation
• cognitive load
• dual task
• gait changes
• injurious falls

Public Interest Statement

Injurious falls are an enormous and increasingly prevalent risk aspect in both clinical and non-clinical populations. Surprisingly, injurious falls are not just caused by weakened muscles and/or impairments in motor system but also caused by higher levels of cognitive load. Everyone has limited attentional capacity. Therefore, people cannot fully concentrate on two or more things at a time. Instead they can change attention from one thing to another, which is facilitated by flexibility in attention. So when a person is in cognitively demanding situation such as texting on a mobile phone, he/she cannot walk safely and consequently is placed in a higher risk of injurious falls. The aims of the present study are to quantitatively measure the increased risk of injurious falls yielded by multitasking, here defined as walking and simultaneous reading or texting, and to investigate what specific parameters of gait are affected.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chorong Oh

Chorong Oh is a doctoral candidate and Leonard L. LaPointe is a Francis Eppes distinguished professor in School of Communication Science and Disorders at Florida State University. They currently work in the Communication Neuroscience Laboratory (CNL). The CNL is a collaborative group of researchers and students at Florida State University and the Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare system who seek to understand and explore relationships between the brain and human communication and cognition. They are particularly interested in exploring cognitive–linguistic interactions (i.e. how attention, memory, and information processing support and interact with language and human communication). They are also interested in understanding and explaining brain disorders that cause communication and cognitive problems, conducting clinical research on questions related to brain, language, and cognition, and exploring how cognitive and communication factors impact other perceptual and motor system.