Abstract

Multitasking is a critical feature of our daily lives. Using a dual-task paradigm, this experiment explored adults’ abilities to simultaneously engage in everyday motor and cognitive activities, counting while walking, under conditions varying the difficulty of each of these tasks. Motor difficulty was manipulated by having participants walk forward versus backward, and cognitive difficulty was manipulated by having participants count forward versus backward, employing either a serial 2 s or serial 3 s task. All of these manipulations were performed in single-task conditions and dual-task conditions. Both motor performance variables and cognitive variables were assessed in these conditions. Analyses of single-task conditions revealed that both motor and cognitive manipulations predictably influenced performance. Analyses of dual-task performance revealed influences of motor and cognitive factors on both motor and cognitive performance. Most centrally, dual-task costs for motor variables revealed that such costs occurred primarily for temporal or spatiotemporal gait parameters and were driven by cognitive manipulations. Dual-task cost analyses for cognitive measures revealed negative dual-task costs, or dual-task benefits, for cognitive performance. Finally, the effects of dual-task manipulations were correlated for motor and cognitive measures, indicating dual-task performance as a significant individual difference variable. These findings are discussed with reference to theories of attentional allocation, as well as the possible role of auditory–motor entrainment in dual-task conditions.