Older Adults Show Reduced Spatial Precision but Preserved Strategy-Use During Spatial Navigation Involving Body-Based Cues.

Andrew S Mcavan,Matthew D Grilli,Alexis Oyao,Arne Ekstrom,Stephanie Doner,Yu Karen Du

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2021.640188

Andrew S Mcavan, Matthew D Grilli + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2021.640188

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Abstract

Older adults typically perform worse on spatial navigation tasks, although whether this is due to degradation of memory or an impairment in using specific strategies has yet to be determined. An issue with some past studies is that older adults are tested on desktop-based virtual reality: a technology many report lacking familiarity with. Even when controlling for familiarity, these paradigms reduce the information-rich, three-dimensional experience of navigating to a simple two-dimensional task that utilizes a mouse and keyboard (or joystick) as means for ambulation. Here, we utilize a wireless head-mounted display and free ambulation to create a fully immersive virtual Morris water maze in which we compare the navigation of older and younger adults. Older and younger adults learned the locations of hidden targets from same and different start points. Across different conditions tested, older adults remembered target locations less precisely compared to younger adults. Importantly, however, they performed comparably from the same viewpoint as a switched viewpoint, suggesting that they could generalize their memory for the location of a hidden target given a new point of view. When we implicitly moved one of the distal cues to determine whether older adults used an allocentric (multiple landmarks) or beaconing (single landmark) strategy to remember the hidden target, both older and younger adults showed comparable degrees of reliance on allocentric and beacon cues. These findings support the hypothesis that while older adults have less precise spatial memories, they maintain the ability to utilize various strategies when navigating.

Highlights

Numerous studies indicate that older adults show reduced performance on spatial memory tasks compared to younger adults (Kirasic, 1991; Newman and Kaszniak, 2000; Moffat et al, 2001; Moffat and Resnick, 2002; Head and Isom, 2010; Rodgers et al, 2012; Wiener et al, 2013; Allison and Head, 2017; Zhong et al, 2017)
These findings suggest that aging may selectively impact the ability to employ an allocentric strategy involving the use of distal cues to remember a hidden target (Moffat, 2009; Lester et al, 2017)
Consistent with many studies that compared older and younger adults on spatial memory and navigation tasks (Newman and Kaszniak, 2000; Moffat et al, 2001; Moffat and Resnick, 2002; Head and Isom, 2010; Rodgers et al, 2012; Wiener et al, 2013; Allison and Head, 2017; Zhong et al, 2017; Nilakantan et al, 2018), we found that older adults performed worse overall in terms of the precision of their memories for the hidden targets

Summary

Introduction

Numerous studies indicate that older adults show reduced performance on spatial memory tasks compared to younger adults (Kirasic, 1991; Newman and Kaszniak, 2000; Moffat et al, 2001; Moffat and Resnick, 2002; Head and Isom, 2010; Rodgers et al, 2012; Wiener et al, 2013; Allison and Head, 2017; Zhong et al, 2017). Similar findings have been shown in older rats navigating the Morris water maze: older rats showed impaired navigation using distal cues, but largely intact spatial memory using proximal cues (Barnes et al, 1980; Gallagher et al, 1993, 2015). Together, these findings suggest that aging may selectively impact the ability to employ an allocentric strategy involving the use of distal cues to remember a hidden target (Moffat, 2009; Lester et al, 2017)

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