Biomedical & Pharmacology Journal Vol. 8(Spl. Edn.), 789-794 (Oct. 2015) The Effect of Dual-Tasking on ‘Timed up and go’ Performance in subjects with chronic nonspecific neck pain MARYAM SAADAT 1 *, MOHAMMAD JAFAR SHATERZADEH 2 , HOSSEIN NEGAHBAN 2 , ALIASGHAR ARASTOO 2 and SHAHLA ZAHEDNEGAD 2 1 PhD Student in Physical Therapy, Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran. 2 Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bpj/784 (Received: August 15, 2015; accepted: September 20, 2015) ABSTRACT In this study, score of a clinical test of physical mobility identified by Timed up and go (TUG) testing also effect of a cognitive task on TUG performance were compared between two groups of nonspecific chronic neck pain and healthy participates. 24 people with nonspecific chronic neck pain and 24 control subjects were participated in this study. Times required to complete TUG was measured in three conditions including test without cognitive task, test with easy and difficult cognitive task. Subjects with nonspecific chronic neck pain had slower speed than control group in all of conditions. Increase in level of cognitive difficulty increased the amount of time of TUG in two groups. Interaction of group by cognitive difficulty was not significant, meaning cognitive difficulty had no effect on time required to complete TUG between two groups. Results of this study suggest mobility problem in subject with nonspecific chronic neck pain. An implication of these findings is that assessment and treatment of functional mobility these subjects are considered in clinic. Time up and go is a simple test to measure functional mobility. It is recommended that further research be undertaken the effect of secondary test on postural control subjects with nonspecific chronic neck pain with advance analysis. Key words: Nonspecific chronic neck pain; Timed up and go test; attention; dual-task methodology INTRODUCTION Neck pain is known as the second common musculoskeletal problem in general people in worldwide which mainly caused by non- specific reason. Non-specific neck pain is the most common type of neck pain that refereed to physical therapy clinic in which is absence of definitive diagnosis or abnormal anatomical structure 1-2 . The loss of motion, stiffness in one or both sides, reducing the accuracy of position and movement sense, decreased muscle strength and disturbance in balance and gait, account as problems of these patients were mentioned in clinical studies 3-6 . The potential cause of impaired balance and gait is due to impaired cervical sensory information and mismatching this information with the visual and the vestibular systems 7 . In everyday activities, adult usually need to maintain postural stability while they perform other task simultaneously such as walking and talking so assessment of postural control concurrent other task is important 8 , In addition, recent approaches indicated postural control is not automatic and needs some degree of attention 9 . Dual task methodology has been used to evaluate the effect of a secondary cognitive task on balance control which is similar to functional activities 10 . In this method, according to the theory