EVALUATION OF IMMEDIATE INTERFERENCE AFTER INTERVENTION WITH DOUBLE TASK IN ELDERLY
Elderly. Functionality. Posture. Cognition.
Introduction: With aging, there is a decline in the adaptive responses necessary to perform daily activities, thus increasing susceptibility to diseases and functional limitations. The cognitive motor interference is the accomplishment of a motor task and a cognitive accomplished simultaneously, the elderly present greater difficulty to carry out these activities. Training can promote walking, balance and cognition, however, there are no types of tasks and duration established for this training. Objective: To investigate the immediate interference of an intervention proposal with different cognitive-motor and motor-motor tasks on the balance of the elderly. Methods: Eight questionnaires / tests were used, besides the evaluation in the force platform, the subjects were divided in two groups, one group was submitted to a single intervention proposal with Double Task and the other with Simple Tasks, after the intervention were reevaluated. Results: We evaluated 30 elderly people who were randomly distributed among the groups. Regarding the sociodemographic data, motor evaluation and cognitive performance, individuals from both groups presented in a homogeneous way, the self report of difficulty to double task presented similar results. Compared to the simple test, there was an increase in the duration of the F8W motor and cognitive TUG and cognitive TUG tests. After the intervention, the Dupla Task group maintained its performance in the tests and presented improvement in the cognitive performance of the activities of semantic fluency, calculation and figures during posturography, whereas the Simple Task group required more time for the simple and motor TUG and presented oscillation in the postural control in the condition of open eyes, semantic fluency and figures, without increase in the number of hits. Conclusions: The secondary tasks caused an increase in the time to perform the functional tests, except for the motor TUG. After the intervention, the performance in the tests of the Double Task group was superior to the Simple Task group, the number of hits was similar. In the posturographic evaluation, there was an improvement in cognitive performance for the Dupla Task group, whereas the Simple Task group presented a greater oscillation for some activities, without improvement in their cognitive performance. There was no difference between the groups on the self report of the frequency of difficulty to perform double task.