It’s often said that you can’t do two things at once and do them well, but a new study is challenging that notion.

University of Florida researchers decided to see if this oft cited belief was true by creating a study in which older adults were asked to complete cognitive tasks while riding a stationary bike.

Originally they had set out to determine the degree to which dual task performance suffers in patients with Parkinson’s disease. To do this, the researchers had a group of patients with Parkinson’s and a group of healthy older adults complete a series of increasingly difficult cognitive tests while cycling.

Participants’ cycling speed was about 25 percent faster while doing the easiest cognitive tasks, but became slower as the cognitive tasks became more difficult, as the researchers expected.

They said, though, they were surprised to discover that, as the participants were tackling the harder cognitive tasks, the cycling speed picked up, and soon they were pedaling at the same rate as when they were doing the easier ones.

The investigators plan to do further research to learn if combining easy cognitive tasks with physical activity could be a way to get people to exercise more in the future, the researchers said.

The study was reported in the journal PLOS ONE.