Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia, 8, 35131, Padua, Italy.
Department of Psychological, Health and Territorial Sciences, University of Chieti, Chieti, Italy.
Psychol Res. 2019 Nov;83(8):1836-1850. doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1033-4. Epub 2018 May 30.
Experiencing an environment by navigating in it or reading a map (route and survey views, respectively) is a typical activity of everyday life. Previous research has demonstrated that aging coincides with a decline in spatial learning, but it is unclear whether this depends to some degree on how the learning conditions relate to the method used to assess the recall. The present study aims to shed light on this issue. Forty-six young, 43 young-old and 38 old-old adults learned outdoor environments from a map and a video, then performed sketch map and route repetition tasks. Participants were assessed on their visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM), and reported their self-assessed visuo-spatial inclinations. The results showed that young adults completed the sketch maps more accurately after learning from a map rather than a video. The same was true of the young-old participants (but not of the old-old), though their performance was not as good as the younger group's. The learning condition had no effect on the route repetition task, however, and only age-related differences emerged, with both older groups performing less well than the young adults. After controlling for learning condition and age group, VSWM and participants' reported propensity to explore places predicted their accuracy in both types of spatial task. The overall results, discussed in the light of spatial cognitive and aging models, show that learning condition (combined with recall tasks) and visuo-spatial factors influence spatial representations, even in aging.
在环境中导航或阅读地图（分别为路线和调查视图）是日常生活中的典型活动。先前的研究表明，随着年龄的增长，空间学习能力会下降，但尚不清楚这种下降在某种程度上是否取决于学习条件与用于评估回忆的方法之间的关系。本研究旨在阐明这一问题。46 名年轻成年人、43 名年轻老年人和 38 名老年老年人从地图和视频中学习户外环境，然后执行草图地图和路线重复任务。参与者的视空间工作记忆（VSWM）得到评估，并报告他们的自我评估视空间倾向。结果表明，年轻成年人从地图而不是视频中学习后，绘制草图地图的准确性更高。年轻老年人也是如此（但老年老年人并非如此），尽管他们的表现不如年轻组好。然而，学习条件对路线重复任务没有影响，仅出现与年龄相关的差异，两个老年组的表现均不如年轻成年人。在控制学习条件和年龄组后，VSWM 和参与者报告的探索场所倾向预测了他们在两种空间任务中的准确性。总体结果，结合空间认知和衰老模型进行讨论，表明学习条件（结合回忆任务）和视空间因素会影响空间表示，即使在衰老过程中也是如此。
