Muffato Veronica, Miola Laura, Pazzaglia Francesca, Meneghetti Chiara
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy.
Interuniversity Research Center in Environmental Psychology (CIRPA), 00185 Rome, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2021 Aug 3;11(8):1033. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11081033.
Aging coincides with a decline in map learning ability, but it is unclear to what extent different aspects of the mental representation are susceptible. The present study aimed to investigate knowledge about landmarks, their positions and distances (categorical and distance relations, respectively) in relation to aging as well as cognitive functioning (measured with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment [MoCA]), visuospatial abilities, and self-reported wayfinding inclinations. Thirty young adults and 60 older adults (30 aged 63-74 and 30 aged 75-86) learned a map, freely recalled the landmarks and performed a map drawing task (considering the number of landmarks missing, position accuracy and distance accuracy). Before that, older participants were also assessed regarding their general cognitive functioning (MoCA) and a series of visuospatial measures. The results show age-related differences among adults in recalling landmarks and in both categorical and distance relations, with a worsening of performance of old-olds only in the former. Older adults' MoCA score related to accuracy in the three measures, and an additional role of spatial anxiety was found for distance accuracy. Above and beyond the age-related decline, the quality of older people's spatial mental representation is related to higher general cognitive level and lower spatial anxiety.
衰老与地图学习能力的下降同时出现，但尚不清楚心理表征的不同方面在多大程度上易受影响。本研究旨在调查与衰老以及认知功能（用蒙特利尔认知评估量表[MoCA]测量）、视觉空间能力和自我报告的寻路倾向相关的地标知识、地标位置和距离（分别为类别关系和距离关系）。30名年轻成年人和60名老年人（30名年龄在63 - 74岁之间，30名年龄在75 - 86岁之间）学习了一幅地图，自由回忆地标并完成了一项地图绘制任务（考虑缺失地标的数量、位置准确性和距离准确性）。在此之前，还对老年参与者的一般认知功能（MoCA）和一系列视觉空间指标进行了评估。结果显示，成年人在回忆地标以及类别关系和距离关系方面存在与年龄相关的差异，只有高龄老年人在前一项任务中的表现变差。老年人的MoCA分数与这三项测量的准确性相关，并且发现空间焦虑对距离准确性有额外影响。除了与年龄相关的下降之外，老年人空间心理表征的质量与更高的一般认知水平和更低的空间焦虑有关。
