Ageing and Dementia Research Centre, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK.
Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK.
Psychol Res. 2022 Mar;86(2):404-420. doi: 10.1007/s00426-021-01495-5. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
Ageing is associated with declines in spatial memory, however, the source of these deficits remains unclear. Here we used eye-tracking to investigate age-related differences in spatial encoding strategies and the cognitive processes underlying the age-related deficits in spatial memory tasks. To do so we asked young and older participants to encode the locations of objects in a virtual room shown as a picture on a computer screen. The availability and utility of room-based landmarks were manipulated by removing landmarks, presenting identical landmarks rendering them uninformative, or by presenting unique landmarks that could be used to encode object locations. In the test phase, participants viewed a second picture of the same room taken from the same (0°) or a different perspective (30°) and judged whether the objects occupied the same or different locations in the room. We found that the introduction of a perspective shift and swapping of objects between encoding and testing impaired performance in both age groups. Furthermore, our results revealed that although older adults performed the task as well as younger participants, they relied on different visual encoding strategies to solve the task. Specifically, gaze analysis revealed that older adults showed a greater preference towards a more categorical encoding strategy in which they formed relationships between objects and landmarks.
随着年龄的增长，空间记忆会衰退，然而，这些缺陷的根源仍不清楚。在这里，我们使用眼动追踪来研究与年龄相关的空间编码策略差异，以及在空间记忆任务中与年龄相关的缺陷背后的认知过程。为此，我们要求年轻和年长的参与者在计算机屏幕上的图片中编码物体的位置。通过移除地标、呈现相同的地标使其失去信息性，或呈现可以用来编码物体位置的独特地标，来操纵基于房间的地标可用性和实用性。在测试阶段，参与者观看了同一房间的第二张图片，这张图片是从相同（0°）或不同（30°）的角度拍摄的，并判断物体是否占据了房间中的相同或不同位置。我们发现，引入视角转换和在编码和测试之间交换物体，会损害两个年龄组的表现。此外，我们的结果表明，尽管老年人的表现与年轻人一样好，但他们依赖于不同的视觉编码策略来解决任务。具体来说，注视分析表明，老年人表现出更大的倾向于更分类的编码策略，他们在这种策略中形成物体和地标之间的关系。
