Table 2 Overview of the main components and the progression of the interventions
Intervention | Main Components | Progression (blocks) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
A week 1–2 | B week 3–6 | C week 7–10 | ||
HiBalance (intervention group) | ➢ Sensory integration ➢ Anticipatory postural adjustments ➢ Motor agility ➢ Stability limits | Exercises with focus on movement quality, familiarization of the exercises and task-specific motor learning. Single task performance of exercises pertaining to each of the main components. | Increased level of difficulty of the exercises. Variation of the exercises within the components. Introducing cognitive and motor dual tasks to increase the complexity of the exercises. | Complexity increased by task variation and combining exercises from all four main components, and by integrating simultaneous cognitive and motor dual tasks. |
HiCommunication (control group) | ➢ Voice intensity ➢ Articulatory precision ➢ Word retrieval ➢ Memory | Exercises with focus on breathing, phonation and articulation. Establishing increased vocal loudness while maintaining good voice quality | Increased level of difficulty of the exercises. Introducing memory games and associational tasks to increase cognitive load during exercises. | Complexity increased by increasing difficulty of memory games, incorporating more interaction between participants and by adding background noise. |