Conscious Movement Processing, Fall-Related Anxiety, and the Visuomotor Control of Locomotion in Older Adults

Older adults anxious about falling will often consciously process walking movements in an attempt to avoid falling. They also fixate their gaze on the present step rather than looking ahead to plan future actions. The present work examined whether conscious movement strategies result in such restricted visual planning.

A total of 18 community-dwelling older adults (agemean = 71.22; SD = 5.75) walked along a path and stepped into two raised targets. Repeated-measures analyses of variance were used to compare gaze behavior and movement kinematics when participants walked: (a) at baseline (ground level); (b) under conditions designed to induce fall-related anxiety (walkway elevated 0.6 m); and (c) in the absence of anxiety (ground level), but with explicit instructions to consciously process movements.

Participants reported increased conscious movement processing when walking both on the elevated walkway (fall-related anxiety condition) and at ground level when instructed to consciously process gait. During both conditions, participants altered their gaze behavior, visually prioritizing the immediate walkway 1-2 steps ahead (areas needed for the on-line visual control of individual steps) at the expense of previewing distal areas of the walking path required to plan future steps. These alterations were accompanied by significantly slower gait and increased stance durations prior to target steps.

Consciously processing movement (in the relative absence of anxiety) resulted in gaze behavior comparable to that observed during conditions of fall-related anxiety. As anxious participants also self-reported directing greater attention toward movement, this suggests that fall-related anxiety may disrupt the visual control of gait through increased conscious movement processing.