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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 28, 2026

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

Published on: December 5, 2014

Probing attention prioritization during dual-task step initiation: a novel method.

Ruopeng Sun¹, John B Shea²

¹Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health-Bloomington, Indiana University Bloomington, 1025 E. 7th Street, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA. rusun@indiana.edu.

Experimental Brain Research

|December 29, 2015

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Cognitive load impacts reactive stepping. High-demand tasks impair postural control and reduce finger-tapping speed, showing attention shifts during movement execution.

Keywords:

Anticipatory postural adjustment Attention Dual task Postural control Step initiation

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Biomechanics
Cognitive Psychology

Background:

Reactive stepping is crucial for maintaining balance.
Attention plays a significant role in motor control, especially during complex tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate attention allocation during reactive stepping under varying cognitive loads.
To examine the interplay between cognitive tasks and anticipatory postural adjustments (APA).

Main Methods:

Ten healthy young adults performed reactive stepping tasks (simple and choice reaction) concurrently with continuous finger-tapping tasks of varying difficulty.
Anticipatory postural adjustments (APA) were assessed via center of pressure trajectory.
Wavelet analysis was used to analyze changes in finger-tapping speed.

Main Results:

Postural performance degraded significantly only under the high-attention-demanding dual-task hard condition.
Finger-tapping speed decreased post-stimulus across all conditions, indicating attention shifts.
The dual-task hard condition promoted early postural prioritization in choice reaction stepping.
Errors in APA led to greater tapping performance decline, suggesting increased attentional resource demand for error correction.

Conclusions:

High cognitive load negatively impacts reactive stepping and attention allocation.
Attention shifts from cognitive to motor tasks during reactive stepping, with prioritization influenced by task complexity and errors.