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Tai Chi practitioners have better postural control and selective attention in stepping down with and without a concurrent auditory response task

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Abstract

To compare the performance of older experienced Tai Chi practitioners and healthy controls in dual-task versus single-task paradigms, namely stepping down with and without performing an auditory response task, a cross-sectional study was conducted in the Center for East-meets-West in Rehabilitation Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. Twenty-eight Tai Chi practitioners (73.6 ± 4.2 years) and 30 healthy control subjects (72.4 ± 6.1 years) were recruited. Participants were asked to step down from a 19-cm-high platform and maintain a single-leg stance for 10 s with and without a concurrent cognitive task. The cognitive task was an auditory Stroop test in which the participants were required to respond to different tones of voices regardless of their word meanings. Postural stability after stepping down under single- and dual-task paradigms, in terms of excursion of the subject’s center of pressure (COP) and cognitive performance, was measured for comparison between the two groups. Our findings demonstrated significant between-group differences in more outcome measures during dual-task than single-task performance. Thus, the auditory Stroop test showed that Tai Chi practitioners achieved not only significantly less error rate in single-task, but also significantly faster reaction time in dual-task, when compared with healthy controls similar in age and other relevant demographics. Similarly, the stepping-down task showed that Tai Chi practitioners not only displayed significantly less COP sway area in single-task, but also significantly less COP sway path than healthy controls in dual-task. These results showed that Tai Chi practitioners achieved better postural stability after stepping down as well as better performance in auditory response task than healthy controls. The improved performance that was magnified by dual motor-cognitive task performance may point to the benefits of Tai Chi being a mind-and-body exercise.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank The Hong Kong Polytechnic University for financial support of this study. Thanks are also owed to the subjects and to the elderly centers for permission to recruit their members. The authors also thank Mr. Bill Purves for his English editorial advice. No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the research findings reported here has conferred or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Xi Lu, Siu N. Fu & William W. N. Tsang

  2. Division of Physical Therapy Education, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA

    Ka-Chun Siu

  3. Department of Physical Therapy, College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Christina W. Y. Hui-Chan

Authors
  1. Xi Lu
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  2. Ka-Chun Siu
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  3. Siu N. Fu
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  4. Christina W. Y. Hui-Chan
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  5. William W. N. Tsang
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Correspondence to William W. N. Tsang.

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Communicated by Fausto Baldissera.

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Lu, X., Siu, KC., Fu, S.N. et al. Tai Chi practitioners have better postural control and selective attention in stepping down with and without a concurrent auditory response task. Eur J Appl Physiol 113, 1939–1945 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-013-2624-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-013-2624-9

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