Effect of cognitve task on the performance of elderly people

We investigated the effect of cognitive task on the performanre of elderly people. The dual-task was composed of three movement tasks (standing balance, stepping under the maximum speed, and keeping the forearm rotation speed) and four cognitive tasks (calculation, remembering, simple reaction tapping, and synchronized tapping). 15 female elderly people and 10 female university students were participated. Results were as follows: (1) During the single-task, the excursion lengths of body sway (LNG) of elderly people were significantly longer than the score of university students (p<.01). (2) During the dual-task, significant differenre was obtained for the standing balance task (elderly grope: p<01; student grope: p< .05). In the case of elderly grope, the LNG scores under the remembering task condition were significantly longer than the score of control (p<.05), simple reaction tapping (p<.05), and synchronized tapping rondition(p<.05). Those results indicate that the lack of conrentration easily affect to the performanre, especially the balance ability. Therefore, simple instruction or cue was needed to keep the attention of elder people during the physical exercise