Investigation of the effects of cognitive tasks on balance performance in young adults

Individuals routinely perform cognitive tasks concurrent to balance functions. The attention is one of the most important cognitive functions and it has effects on vestibular system. This study aims to investigate the connection between balance and cognitive tasks under different conditions. Visual attention tasks (VAT) and auditory attention tasks (AAT) were given to 30 healthy adults (40.42 ± 11.22 years) during functional balance tasks. Sensory Organization Test (SOT) and Adaptation Test (ADT) were used for the evaluation of postural stability and adaptation. The sounds were presented from the computer speakers in AATs, and VATs were presented in the virtual reality (VR) environment. The first SOT condition had a statistically significant difference between all dual VAT (DT-VAT) and single task (ST) (p