Gyselinck Valérie, Meneghetti Chiara, Bormetti Monica, Orriols Eric, Piolino Pascale, De Beni Rossana
Laboratoire Mémoire et Cognition, Institut de Psychologie, Université Paris Descartes, 71 av E. Vaillant, 92774, Boulogne-Billancourt cedex, France.
Cogn Process. 2013 Aug;14(3):309-16. doi: 10.1007/s10339-013-0557-1. Epub 2013 Mar 28.
The aim of this study is to broaden our understanding of the construction and early decline of spatial mental representations in route learning, considering the extent to which spatial ability and age-related differences in environment learning interact. The experiment examines spatial mental representation derived from taking a realistic route acquired using virtual environment and compares individuals different in age but with similar spatial ability. A sample of 34 young (20-30 years) and 30 middle-aged (50-60 years) females with good mental rotation ability were chosen. Participants learned a complex route through its presentation in a virtual environment and then performed a series of tasks (landmark recognition, location of landmarks and verification of spatial relations). Results show that the two participant age groups had similar performance in landmark recognition task and in verification of sentences describing direct spatial relations; instead, the middle-aged group showed a poorer performance than younger in their ability to locate landmarks and to judge the truth of indirect spatial sentences. These results first suggest that spatial abilities have to be seriously considered to avoid any confusion with age, as age-related differences are attenuated when individuals are different in age but similar in spatial ability. Second they confirm a specific difficulty of older participants to handle spatial information in a global configuration.
本研究的目的是拓宽我们对路线学习中空间心理表征的构建和早期衰退的理解，同时考虑空间能力与环境学习中年龄相关差异之间的相互作用程度。该实验考察了从使用虚拟环境获取的真实路线中衍生出的空间心理表征，并比较了年龄不同但空间能力相似的个体。选取了34名年轻女性（20 - 30岁）和30名中年女性（50 - 60岁）作为样本，她们均具有良好的心理旋转能力。参与者通过在虚拟环境中呈现的复杂路线进行学习，然后执行一系列任务（地标识别、地标定位以及空间关系验证）。结果表明，两个年龄组的参与者在地标识别任务以及描述直接空间关系的句子验证方面表现相似；相反，中年组在定位地标和判断间接空间句子真实性的能力上比年轻组表现更差。这些结果首先表明，必须认真考虑空间能力，以免与年龄产生混淆，因为当个体年龄不同但空间能力相似时，年龄相关差异会减弱。其次，它们证实了老年参与者在处理全局配置中的空间信息时存在特定困难。
