Changes of locomotion in old age depend on task setting.
BACKGROUND
Laboratory settings may differ from everyday life with respect to factors such as attention, motivation, intention, and self-efficacy. Since those factors are likely to influence subjects' performance on locomotor tasks, we evaluated whether the age-related changes of locomotion previously observed under laboratory conditions are equally present in a real life-like scenario.


METHODS
15 young and 15 older subjects walked along a marked path of 25 m length and 0.3m width in a laboratory environment. 14 young and 13 older subjects walked in a community park along a 3 km path, with a straight and level registration section located after 1.5 km.


RESULTS
Step duration was longer, angular limb excursion was smaller, and the spatio-temporal gait variability was higher in the laboratory than in the park. Analysis of co-variance revealed that these changes cannot be traced back to a single cause. The variability of step duration and of limb excursion increased in old age under laboratory conditions, but only the latter parameter increased under real life-like conditions.


CONCLUSIONS
Our laboratory setting destabilized the gait pattern more than our real life-like setting, thus accentuating age-related changes.
Institute of Physiology and Anatomy, German Sport University, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50933 Cologne, Germany. bock@dshs-koeln.de
Otmar
O
Bock
Rainer
R
Beurskens
D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005684:Gait / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008124:Locomotion / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology; D020377:Self Efficacy; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis