The Impact of Divided Attention on Cognitive and Gait Outcomes in People with Parkinson's Disease

The purpose of the present analysis was to (1) determine the DTI for absolute and percentage-based measures of gait and cognitive performance and (2) quantitatively characterize the prioritization between tasks for people with PD and healthy older controls. W evaluated a gait task and a cognitive task (backwards counting) during single-task and dual-task conditions in healthy older adults and patients with PD and noted their respective dual-task interference and prioritization scores. We found that this analysis does not totally support the literature that patients with PD will exhibit a Posture-Second strategy when presented with dual-tasking conditions. Instead, this analysis found that with both healthy older adults as well as adults with PD, there is an inconclusive Prioritization strategy utilized by both groups. The exception to this was the Male Controls, who exhibited a more Posture-First strategy. With the current knowledge, future research into Prioritization strategies for both healthy older adults and adults with Parkinson's should investigate the effect of Gender.