Decreasing Internal Focus of Attention Improves Postural Control During Quiet Standing in Young Healthy Adults

Abstract

This experiment was designed to investigate whether and how decreasing the amount of attentional focus invested in postural control could affect bipedal postural control. Twelve participants were asked to stand upright as immobile as possible on a force platform in one control condition and one cognitive condition. In the latter condition, they performed a short-term digit-span memory task. Decreased center-of-gravity displacements and decreased center-of-foot-pressure displacements minus center-of-gravity displacements were observed in the cognitive condition relative to the control condition. These results suggest that shifting the attentional focus away from postural control by executing a concurrent attention-demanding task could increase postural performance and postural efficiency.

Key words:

• attentional focus
• constrained action hypothesis
• cognitive activity
• postural control

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicolas Vuillerme

Please address all correspondence concerning this article to Nicolas Vuillerme, FRE 3405 AGeing, Imaging, Modeling Laboratory, CNRS - Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble - EPHE, Faculty of Medicine, 38706 La Tronche cédex France.