Purpose: The goal of this study was to investigate changes in dual-task performance according to age and difficulty of cognitive tasks for the in community-dwelling elderly populations, as well as to examine their changes in hand dexterity according to age and cognitive function.
Methods: A total of 135 people aged 65 years old and over participated in the study. To evaluate each participant’s dual-task performance, each participant completed a dual task. To assess their cognitive function, the Korean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE-K) and the Korean version of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-K) were the tools used. Participants were divided into three groups based on their age: 65-69 years, 70-79 years, and 80-89 years.
Results: The findings showed that age groups and the difficulty of the cognitive task significantly affected the amount of time required for dual-task performance (p<.001). Additionally, the dual-task correct response rate (CRR) decreased significantly with age groups and the difficulty of the cognitive task (p<.001). The amount of time required for finger dexterity performance increased significantly with age groups (mean score±standard deviation [SD]; 19.46±2.26 in subjects aged 65-69 years; 21.92±2.61 in subjects aged 70-79 years; and 23.82±2.92 in subjects aged 80-89 years; p<.001). Moreover, as a result of the correlation between hand dexterity and cognitive function, MoCA-K was -0.563 and MMSE-K was -.412, showing a statistically significant correlation (p<.001).
Conclusions: Age and the difficulty of the cognitive task affect the community-dwelling elderly populations in terms of dual-task performance and dual-task CRR. In addition, aging and general cognition have an impact on hand dexterity. Based on the results of this study, it is anticipated that the results will serve as a reference for domestic clinical trials that confirm cognitive decline in the elderly using dual task and hand dexterity evaluation.