Are age-related deficits in route learning related to control of visual attention?

Abstract

Typically aged adults show reduced ability to learn a route compared to younger adults. In this experiment, we investigate the role of visual attention through eye-tracking and engagement of attentional resources in age-related route learning deficits. Participants were shown a route through a realistic virtual environment before being tested on their route knowledge. Younger and older adults were compared on their gaze behaviour during route learning and on their reaction time to a secondary probe task as a measure of attentional engagement. Behavioural results show a performance deficit in route knowledge for older adults compared to younger adults, which is consistent with previous research. We replicated previous findings showing that reaction times to the secondary probe task were longer at decision points than non-decision points, indicating stronger attentional engagement at navigationally relevant locations. However, we found no differences in attentional engagement and no differences for a range of gaze measures between age groups. We conclude that age-related changes in route learning ability are not reflected in changes in control of visual attention or regulation of attentional engagement.

Age-related differences in visual encoding and response strategies contribute to spatial memory deficits

“…They also made more fixations that were consequently shorter in duration as they are bound by fixed encoding times. These patterns are not reflective of previous ageing research using other tasks that have reported that ageing is associated with reductions in saccade amplitudes, velocity and frequency (Dowiasch, Marx, Einhäuser, & Bremmer, 2015;Hilton, Miellet, Slattery, Wiener, 2019;Porter et al, 2010;Williams, Zacks, & Henderson, 2009). Consistent with our findings, Açik, Sarwary, Schultze-Kraft, Onat, and König (2010) found that older adults made more fixations when viewing complex visual stimuli.…”

Spatial Disorientation in Alzheimer's Disease: The Missing Path From Virtual Reality to Real World

“…These results can then be related to patient performance on the RW tests to investigate whether one can predict patients at a high risk of exhibiting spatial disorientation in the RW based on VR alone. In line with our VR-RW model are successful approaches used by recent healthy aging studies including a realistic VR version of a RW town, immersive VR with RW walking, and VR navigation to predict navigation in complex RW environments (Chen et al, 2017;Coutrot et al, 2019;Hilton et al, 2019).…”

Effects of practice on visuo-spatial attention in a wayfinding task

“…A number of studies have quantified the cognitive demand of wayfinding with the dual-task approach. They observed substantial interference between a wayfinding task and another, concurrent task (Lindberg and Gärling, 1982), particularly when the concurrent task required visuo-spatial processing (Garden et al, 2002;Meilinger et al, 2008), and when participants approached an intersection (Allen and Kirasic, 2003;Hartmeyer et al, 2017;Hilton et al, 2020). In accordance with established dual-task reasoning, these results indicate that wayfinding competes with the other task for cognitive resources, mainly for resources related to visuo-spatial processing, and mainly at times when participants must decide which way to proceed across an intersection.…”