The cost of dual-task walking: Cognitive demands restrict gaze behaviour and gait planning
Yuri Russo, Jiaxi Ye, Sarah E Lamb, Amy Gear, William Lyon, Jinying Qiu, Millie Banks, Emily Martin · 2026
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Description
Yuri Russo and colleagues set healthy young adults walking a winding raised-stepping course while their eyes and steps were tracked, then added a mental task on top. Adaptive walking normally depends on looking ahead to plan each footfall. Twenty-three volunteers in their late teens and early twenties walked the L-shaped path alone and while thinking hard.
Dual-task walking slowed everyone down, lengthened the time both feet spent grounded, and scattered their gaze toward irrelevant spots with fewer, shorter looks at the stepping targets. Oddly, a sideways cross-step pattern appeared more often without the mental load. Even in the young and fit, the authors show, thinking steals the visual planning that safe walking needs.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yuri Russo, Jiaxi Ye, Sarah E Lamb, Amy Gear, William Lyon, Jinying Qiu, Millie Banks, Emily Martin |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 46324 |
| LICENSE | CC_BY |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | PLOS |