Falls are the leading cause of accidental death in older adults. Impaired balance is a significant factor accounting for the increased incidence of falls experienced by older adults. When attempting to identify the variables contributing to poor balance, most studies have focused on the physical aspects of balance. Few studies have examined the impact of cognition on postural control. The purpose of this study was to utilize a dualtask paradigm and examine the effect of several different cognitive domains on postural stability in older adults. The major finding of this study was that the degree of postural instability behaviorally expressed under dual-task conditions was likely mediated by task difficulty and task novelty and not the specific cognitive processes believed to underlie performance on each task. The results support the findings of others demonstrating that cognitively demanding tasks interfere with postural stability. This is true despite the feet that the maintenance of balance is ofien regarded as a highly automated task and as such, should not be negatively affected by a secondary cognitive task. Furthermore, results indicate a disproportionate increase of postural sway in the medial-lateral compared to the anterior-posterior direction. Greater relative sway in the ML direction may be due to the familiarity of responding to sway in the AP direction and the novelty of responding to sway in the ML direction. Based on the findings of this investigation, Pashler’s response selection bottleneck model was used to describe the relationship between cognition and postural sway in older adults. Using Pashler’s model, it is likely that more novel and effortful tasks placed greater demands on and thus lengthen the decision-making stage and as a result delay the execution of sway reducing postural adjustments.