Recourse Allocation in Young and Elderly Adults

Objectives: the role of cognitive processes in postural control was shown in dual task studies. however,there was no definite evidence on how verbal instructions influence the allocation of attention to posturalcontrol. this study determined whether young and elderly adults are able to deliberately control theresource allocation when performing a sensorimotor and cognitive task simultaneously and if there areany differences between young and older adults in this regard.method: a cross-sectional study was performed in 16 young adults aged (23.95±3.31) and 20 elderlyadults (61±2.21). participants were selected by non-probable sampling method. parallel standing andtandem standing on a hard surface were used as postural tasks. force plate was used for posturalperformance. postural sway was measured and the choice reaction time task was conducted as thecognitive task. dual-task performance was measured under three different instructions including payingattention to the cognitive task, postural task, and equal attention to both tasks.results: for postural performance the main effect of instructions and interactions by difficulty andgroups were not significant (p?0.05) for cognitive performance. however, the main effect of group wassignificant (f=5.672, p=0.023), showing that elderly adults have longer reaction times. the interaction ofinstruction by group effect and also interaction of instruction by postural difficulty on mean reaction timewas also significant, (f=3.710, p=0.030), (f=5.242, p=0.008) respectively .discussion: because of age related changes in the brain, flexibility in elderly adults are less than youngadults.