ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences2025
The Influence of Attentional Focus on Gait Stability and Conscious Movement Processing During Challenging Walking Conditions in Older Adults.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05411536 (The Effects of Attentional Focus Instructions on Real-time Conscious Movement Processing While Walking in a Challenging Environment for Older Adults at Risk of Falling in Hong Kong), which is not on this map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
The Effects of Attentional Focus Instructions on Real-time Conscious Movement Processing While Walking in a Challenging Environment for Older Adults at Risk of Falling in Hong Kong: Implications for Rehabilitation
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Effect of external versus internal focus of attention instructions on gait performance in people with multiple sclerosis.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesIt has been proposed that the effect of an external focus in gait might be more beneficial in more challenging tasks compared to a natural walking condition. This study sought to (a) address any causal link between an external focus and improved gait stability during walking on an unstable surface and (b) explore any possible psycho-cognitive mechanism underpinning these changes in older adults.
methods98 older adults (mean age: 70.6 ± 4.6) were invited to walk along an 8-meter elevated, foam walkway at a self-selected pace under 3 blocks of attentional focus conditions (i.e., internal focus, external focus, and control) for a total of 9 trials (3 trials for each condition). Gait stability was represented by the variability of spatial and temporal gait parameters. Electroencephalography (EEG) T3-Fz coherence was used to indicate real-time conscious movement processing during walking.
resultsOlder adults displayed significantly lower variability of stride length and step width under an external focus condition compared to control. No gait changes were observed between an internal focus condition and control. There were no significant differences in EEG T3-Fz coherence among the 3 conditions. DISCUSSION: We demonstrate evidence of a causal link between an external focus and improved gait stability in older adults under a challenging walking environment. However, we postulate that this improvement might be independent of real-time conscious movement processing. Our findings nonetheless suggest that external focus strategies might be an effective rehabilitative approach for falls prevention by reducing gait variability during adaptive locomotion in older adults. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05411536.
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