The effect of age on the attentional demands of postural control

A dual-task paradigm was used to determine the attentional demands of sever al postural control tasks in 16 older women (age, 71.5 +/- 3.4 years) and 1 4 young women (age, 25.5 +/- 2.4 years). Older women had slower verbal reac tion times (VRT) compared with the younger women and increased reaction tim e more from a sitting to standing posture. Compared with the younger women, older women required more cognitive resources to maintain a simple eyes op en standing posture versus an eyes open seated posture. Further, older wome n had significantly greater VRT during the dual-task conditions compared wi th younger women. However, VRT did not significantly change as the difficul ty of the primary task increased in either group. These data have implicati ons for older adults who may be at risk for falls in situations where they may be engaged in concurrent tasks, even when those tasks are considered au tomated and/or lower order operations. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All r ights reserved.