Final answer:
Increasing manual facilitation often means more guidance and support during gait training, potentially decreasing gait speed initially. However, the actual effect on gait speed can depend on the context and whether the facilitation successfully corrects gait patterns leading to improvements.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question asks about the effect of increasing manual facilitation on gait speed. Manual facilitation typically involves the use of hands-on techniques by physical therapists to enhance movement patterns during gait training. If a physical therapist provides increased manual facilitation, this usually translates to providing more guidance and support, which could restrict the patient's natural gait pattern and thus potentially decrease gait speed. However, this is not a straightforward relationship as it can depend on the context of the facilitation. If the facilitation is meant to correct a gait pattern and the patient quickly incorporates the corrections, it could eventually lead to an increase in gait speed. Without additional context, the most conservative answer is that increasing manual facilitation would, at least initially, decrease gait speed until the patient adjusts and possibly improves their gait pattern.