Memory for object locations in young and elderly adults.

The spatial memory of elderly and young adults was compared in two conditions: one in which common objects were displayed on a map, and one in which the objects were displayed in an actual environment (a large room) represented by the map. In the map condition, elderly adults had lower spatial memory scores than did young adults. In the room condition, however, the performance of elderly adults was not different from that of young adults. It was hypothesized that differences in the visual distinctiveness of the two contexts, map and room, were responsible for the interaction of age and task setting. An experiment using models of the map-room structures, models that differed in the visual distinctiveness of their components, confirmed this hypothesis.