Article

The amount of attentional resources necessary to walk in children, and how they
evolve during childhood remains unclear. This study examined children's gait
parameters in different dual-task conditions. 53 children, divided into two age
groups (7-9 and 10-12 years old), and 18 adults walked on a mat in three
different cognitive conditions: watching a video (video condition), listening its
soundtrack (audio condition), and without any additional task (control
condition). Questions were asked at the end of the video and audio conditions to
make sure that participants were paying attention to the stimuli. A GAITRite(R)
system was used for recording the gait data. Results showed an increase of
velocity and step duration, and a decrease of cadence and percentage of double
limb support duration from 7 years of age to adulthood during dual-task walking
compared with single-task walking. This improvement seemed to be linear from 7
years to adults' age. The interference of dual-task on gait was larger for the
video than for the auditory task and decreased with age. We concluded that
walking requires a significant amount of attentional resources in children and
that children rely more than adults on visual processes for walking.
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Langue : ANGLAIS