Spatial knowledge acquisition in younger and elderly adults: a study in a virtual environment

This study investigated the process of spatial knowledge acquisition in younger adults (20-30 years), middle-aged adults (40-50 years), and older adults (60-70 years) in a desktop virtual environment, where participants learned a way through a virtual maze, had to recall landmarks that were present in the maze, and had to draw an overview of the maze. The results revealed a general decline in spatial memory of the elderly, that is, in the time needed to learn a new route, in the retrieval of landmarks from memory (landmark knowledge), and in the ability to draw a map (configurational knowledge). When the route with landmarks was perfectly learned, however, there was no age dependent difference in finding the correct route without landmarks in the virtual maze (retrieval of route knowledge). Therefore, we conclude that not all aspects of spatial knowledge acquisition and spatial memory degrade with increasing age during adulthood.