Characteristics of tasks utilized for evaluation of judgment errors in the elderly.
Yumi Sakamoto, Yukari Ohashi
PMID 27821954WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults misjudged their abilities.
They predicted shorter reaches and faster obstacle walking than they actually did. Obstacle-course errors differed between fallers and non-fallers, but this study did not test whether any task prevents falls.
Key findings
01In all four tasks, predicted performance differed from observed performance: predicted reach was shorter than actual reach, and predicted walking time was lower than actual time.
02The obstacle-course judgment error ratio differed between fallers and non-fallers: fallers had a ratio of 0.76 and non-fallers had a ratio of 1.0.
03Absolute obstacle-course error was larger in people in their 80s than in people in their 60s: 4.33 seconds versus 2.07 seconds.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study was done in one rural area of Japan, and all participants could already walk without assistance, so it may not apply to more frail or assisted walkers. There was no younger control group, so the paper cannot say how much of the judgment error is specific to aging. Falls and fear of falling were asked by interview over the past year, not observed or recorded prospectively. Thirty-six of the 94 participants moved during the Functional Reach prediction, so only 58 were analyzed for that task's judgment error. The fall-history comparison used small subgroups, with 12 fallers and 46 non-fallers among the 58 participants included in the ratio analysis. The study measured performance at one time point, so it cannot show that judgment errors caused falls or that any test improves outcomes.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the obstacle-course result as proof that testing or changing prediction errors will prevent falls. This was a measurement study at one time point with no intervention and no control group, and the fall-history difference was a secondary comparison.