Age differences in spatial memory in a virtual environment navigation task

The use of virtual environment (VE) technology to assess spatial navigation in humans has become increasingly common and provides an opportunity to quantify age-related deficits in human spatial navigation and promote a comparative approach to the neuroscience of cognitive aging. The purpose of the present study was to assess age differences in navigational behavior in a VE and to examine the relationship between this navigational measure and other more traditional measures of cognitive aging. Following pre-training, participants were confronted with a VE spatial learning task and completed a battery of cognitive tests. The VE consisted of a richly textured series of interconnected hallways, some leading to dead ends and others leading to a designated goal location in the environment. Compared to younger participants, older volunteers took longer to solve each trial, traversed a longer distance, and made significantly more spatial memory errors. After 5 learning trials, 86% of young and 24% of elderly volunteers were able to locate the goal without error. Performance on the VE navigation task was positively correlated with measures of mental rotation and verbal and visual memory. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.