###### Abstract  
The purpose of this study was to compare the difference in the accuracy of gait events between young and older adults during metronomic walking by auditory cueing. Additionally, age-specific changes in the gait event accuracy according to additional simultaneous cognitive tasks were examined. The time interval (or temporal error) between the auditory cue (i.e., metronome) and the heel contact was used as the accuracy of the gait event. Fifteen young group (YG, \(24.7\pm 0.8\) years) and 14 elderly (EG, \(78.4\pm 5.5\) years) people participated in the experiment. The temporal errors under two gait conditions (MET: walking with metronome; MET + BC: walking with metronome while counting backward) were compared for each group. The results revealed that all the temporal errors of EG were significantly greater than those of YG. While the addition of simultaneous cognitive tasks resulted in a significant increase in temporal error in both age groups, the coefficient of variation (CV) of the temporal error significantly increased only in the EG group. In other words, although heel contact accuracy with auditory stimuli was affected by the simultaneous cognitive task in both groups, it was demonstrated that the variability of the error in the young adults remained constant. Therefore, the time error measurement used in this study has the potential to be used as a tool to judge the gait instability of the elderly compared with young adults.  
r 2021 11 734 2021 12 January 2021 14 January 202  
and/or aging have been reported [8]. For this reason, according to a study on dual task paradigms during walking, it is considered that reduced cognitive capacity does not sufficiently intervene in controlling cognitive loads during dual task walking [9]. From this point of view, the rhythmic auditory cueing can be used not only as a method for rehabilitation, but also as a tool for assessing gait. Generally, gait abnormalities in about 15% of the elderly population are not due to an underlying disease, and the rate of gait abnormalities increases rapidly with age [10]. It has already been established that the gait variables and strategies in the elderly population are different from those in young adults [1]. Adjustment of the foot position and the heel contact time during gait can be viewed as goal-oriented movement that involves the entire body [11; 12], and a gait abnormality can be regarded as a gait disorder, which is a physical abnormality or change. This movement accuracy with cueing could lead to enhanced contrast between subject groups with different levels of body balance (i.e., age-difference) when the subjects are asked to perform additional simultaneous cognitive tasks [2]. Nevertheless, only few studies have compared the accuracy of gait timing with auditory stimulus in terms of body balance, with the exception of studies of local movements such as finger tapping or bimanual movement [13; 14].  
In our previous study, we developed a system to measure this time error to use the gait accuracy of the auditory rhythm, which can be quantified as the time error between the auditory rhythm and the heel contact, as an index to evaluate gait stability [15]. Therefore, as an additional study using this system, this study compared the gait accuracy of the elderly and young adults by performing additional simultaneous cognitive tasks when walking the metronome using auditory stimuli.