Physical Therapy Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2025
Abstract
Objective: To examine the effects of incorporating (1) a neurocognitive reactive component and (2) a neurocognitive multitask component on performance degradation of a single-limb hop functional performance test.
Design: Randomized within-subject design of 32 healthy young adults.
Methods: Participants performed 3 randomly assigned variations of the single-limb T-Drill Hop Test (TDHT). The time to complete each test was recorded. The reactive TDHT (R-TDHT) consisted of the TDHT with a flashing light, indicating the "T" intersection hop direction. The neurocognitive reactive-recall TDHT (RR-TDHT) incorporated the R-TDHT and required participants to observe 5 flashing light colors. Participants then recalled the colors in order at test completion. Each test was performed on the dominant and nondominant lower extremities in a randomly assigned order. Within-group differences in completion time between tests were calculated using a test by limb analysis of variance.
Results: Test complexity prompted similar completion time changes between the limbs (P = .718, ηp2=.011). The R-TDHT (P = .001, d = .12) and RR-TDHT (P < .001, d = 0.24) completion times were significantly longer than the TDHT, and the RR-TDHT completion time was significantly longer (P < .001, d = 0.11) than the R-TDHT. The completion time differences between TDHT and R-TDHT and between R-TDHT and RR-TDHT were statistically identical (P = .770, d = 0.05). There was no statistically significant completion time difference between the dominant and nondominant limbs (P = .420, d = 0.06).
Conclusion: The inclusion of a neurocognitive reactive activity and a multitask neurocognitive reactive-recall activity to a functional performance test significantly increased the test completion time compared with the functional performance test alone. The addition of a neurocognitive reactive component or a multitask neurocognitive reactive-recall component to the TDHT provides an effective means of improving the ecological validity of the current lower extremity functional performance test.
Recommended Citation
Stoddard, S. M., Hill, L., Riemann, B. L., & Davies, G. J. (2025). Effects of Neurocognitive Multitask Activities on a Novel Lower Extremity Functional Performance Test. Journal of sport rehabilitation, 34(8), 904–910. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsr.2024-0433
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Publication Title
Journal of sport rehabilitation
DOI
10.1123/jsr.2024-0433
Comments
© 2025 The Authors. Published by Human Kinetics, Inc. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, CC BY-NC 4.0, which permits the copy and redistribution in any medium or format, provided it is not used for commercial purposes, the original work is properly cited, the new use includes a link to the license, and any changes are indicated. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/4.0.