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Age-related changes in decision making with different wayfinding strategies
Ju-Yi Huang1, Daniel Memmert2, Oezguer A Onur3
1Institute of Exercise Training and Sport Informatics, German Sport University Cologne, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50933, Cologne, Germany. juyi.huang@stud.dshs-koeln.de.
Psychological Research
|November 11, 2025
Summary
Older adults show poorer wayfinding accuracy, but age-related declines in cognitive strategies like the cognitive map strategy are not always worse than simpler strategies. Performance correlations between strategies decrease with age.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human factors
Background:
- Wayfinding skills often decline in older adults.
- Understanding age-related differences in cognitive strategies is crucial for maintaining independence.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how aging affects five distinct wayfinding strategies.
- To examine age-related differences in decision-making at intersections.
Main Methods:
- A within-person design comparing young and older adults.
- Participants navigated five mazes employing serial order, associative cue, beacon, relative location, or cognitive map strategies.
- Maze difficulty and environment were standardized to minimize bias.
Main Results:
- Older adults exhibited poorer wayfinding accuracy compared to younger adults.
- Age-related decrements were not more pronounced for the cognitive map strategy than for simpler strategies.
- The correlation between performance across different strategies diminished significantly in older age.
- Older adults showed reduced incidental knowledge acquisition during wayfinding without compensatory cue reliance.
Conclusions:
- Age-related wayfinding deficits are influenced by task difficulty.
- Aging is associated with a disintegration of cognitive mechanisms underlying wayfinding, especially in tasks with high visuospatial and multitasking demands.
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