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Dual task performance in Huntington's disease: A comparison of choice reaction time tasks
Eleftheria Vaportzis1, Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis1, Andrew Churchyard1
1School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University.
Insights
Individuals with Huntington
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder affecting cognitive functions.
- Dual-tasking performance is often impaired in neurological conditions.
- The Multiple Resources Theory proposes distinct cognitive resources for different tasks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if dual tasks impose disproportionately higher cognitive demands on individuals with Huntington's disease (HD) compared to healthy controls.
- To evaluate the applicability of the Multiple Resources Theory to dual-tasking in HD.
Main Methods:
- Thirteen participants with HD and 13 controls performed two sets of dual tasks.
- Tasks varied in difficulty: Set 1 (simple choice reaction time + digit forward), Set 2 (complex choice reaction time + digit backward).
Main Results:
- Participants with HD were slower overall but maintained accuracy on simpler tasks.
- HD participants showed reduced accuracy on complex dual tasks and greater speed-accuracy trade-offs.
- No significant difference in dual-task costs was observed between HD participants and controls.
Conclusions:
- Findings do not support the Multiple Resources Theory for dual-tasking in HD.
- Results align with the Unitary Resource Theory and suggest attentional impairments in HD.
- Attentional deficits may explain dual-tasking difficulties in Huntington's disease.
Objective:
This study investigated whether dual tasks make disproportionately high demands in Huntington's disease (HD) compared with controls, and also tested the Multiple Resources Theory.
Method:
Thirteen HD participants and 13 controls completed 2 dual task sets that varied in difficulty and complexity: Set 1 paired simple choice reaction time (RT) with digit forward, and Set 2 paired complex choice RT with digit backward.
Results:
We found that HD participants were overall slower; however, although they maintained similar levels of accuracy in the simple choice RT tasks with controls, their accuracy decreased in the complex choice RT tasks. In addition, we found that HD participants were more susceptible to speed-accuracy trade-offs. Despite that, they did not show greater dual task costs than controls.
Conclusions:
Overall, our findings do not support the Multiple Resources Theory, but they do provide some support for the Unitary Resource Theory and the attentional impairment hypothesis.
