Spatial updating of multiple targets: Comparison of younger and older adults

Abstract

When walking without vision, people mentally keep track of the directions and distances of previously viewed objects, a process called spatial updating. The current experiment indicates that while people across a large age range are able to update multiple targets in memory without perceptual support, aging negatively affects accuracy, precision, and decision time. Participants (20 to 80 years of age) viewed one, three, or six targets (colored lights) on the floor of a dimly lit room. Then without vision, they walked to a target designated by color, either directly or indirectly (via a forward turning point). The younger adults’ final stopping points were both accurate (near target) and precise (narrowly dispersed), but updating performance did degrade slightly with number of targets. Older adults’ performance was consistently worse than the younger group, but the lack of interaction between age and memory load indicates that the effect of age on performance was not further exacerbated by a greater number of targets. The number of targets also significantly increased the latency required to turn toward the designated target for both age groups. Taken together, results extend previous work showing impressive updating performance by younger adults, with novel findings showing older adults manifest small but consistent degradation of updating performance of multi-target arrays.

Cognitive Aspects of Spatial Orientation

“…The process of keeping mental track of directions and distances of previously viewed objects is called mental updating. In [50] Bennett et al shows that performance in this process is decreasing with age. There are two theoretical models of spatial updating allocentric (all locations, including that of navigation, are designated in terms of extrinsic coordinates) and egocentric (the origin is centered on the navigator and external locations are updated accordingly).…”

No single, stable 3D representation can explain pointing biases in a spatial updating task

“…In this paper, we examine the accuracy and precision of pointing to targets that were viewed from one location and then not seen again as the observer walked to a new location to point, in order to test the hypothesis that a single 3D reconstruction of the scene, built up when the observer was initially inspecting the scene, can explain observers’ pointing directions. The task is similar to that described in many experiments on spatial updating such as indirect walking to a target 25–28 , a triangle completion task 29,30 , drawing a map of a studied environment including previously viewed objects’ location 19,31,32 , or viewing a set of objects on a table and then indicating the remembered location of the objects after walking round it or after the table has been rotated 33–36 . However, none of these studies have compared directly the predictions of a 3D reconstruction model with one that varies according to the location of the observer when they point, as we do here.…”

No single, stable 3D representation can explain pointing biases in a spatial updating task

“…The task is similar to that described in many experiments on spatial updating such as indirect walking to a target [25,26,27,28], a triangle completion task [29,30], drawing a map of a studied environment including previously viewed objects' location [31,19,32], or viewing a set of objects on a table and then indicating the remembered location of the objects after walking round it or after the table has been rotated [33,34,35,36]. However, none of these studies have compared directly the predictions of a 3D reconstruction model with one that varies according to the location of the observer when they point, as we do here.…”