Author's response to reviews Title: Falls and Falls Efficacy: The Role of Sustained Attention in Older Adults. Authors:

Thank you very much for considering our manuscript for publication and for the very helpful and detailed comments from you and from the reviewers. We would very much like to accept your offer to resubmit a revised version of the manuscript. We have revised the manuscript taking into full consideration all of the comments of the reviewers, and we include below an itemized, point-by-point response to their comments. We hope that this revised version of the manuscript will be to your satisfaction and we look forward to hearing from you. General comments In addition to the reviewers' comments, I would urge the authors to reconsider their use of the term "fear of falling". They used a falls efficacy measure and not a measure of fear of falling. The two constructs are distinct although they are often used interchangeably which is probably not correct. I would recommend that the authors see the following article for a more detailed discussion of this issue Hadjistavropoulos, T., Delbaere, K., Dever Fitzgerald, T. (2011). Reconceptualizing the role of fear of falling and balance confidence in fall risk. Reply: We have reconsidered our use of the term " fear of falling " and have replaced it with " falls self efficacy " or " lower falls efficacy " , throughout the manuscript. Also, we take into account the recent discussion in the literature regarding the distinctions between these two constructs. This is outlined in the " Background " and " Discussion " sections of the paper. See Page 4, Background, Paragraph 2. " Low falls-related self efficacy (loss of one's confidence to perform activities of daily living without falling) and fear of falling are significant psychological consequences of having fallen [4]. While low falls efficacy and fear of falling were traditionally considered interchangeable concepts, more recent evidence indicates that they are correlated but distinct dimensions [3,5,6]. Both low falls efficacy and fear of falling are associated with previous and future falls [7-12], however falls efficacy is a stronger predictor of falls and can be considered a mediator between fear of falling and falls [12]. Interestingly, fear of falling has been reported in older people who have not fallen suggesting that factors other than falls history may influence the manifestation of fear of falling among older people [9,13]. ". See Page 17, Discussion, Paragraph 2. " …………..This is difficult to interpret but perhaps here lower falls efficacy …