TY  - JOUR
AU  - Merhav, Maayan
TI  - How spatial-cue reliability affects navigational performance in young and older adults.
JO  - Aging, neuropsychology, and cognition
VL  - 32
IS  - 2
SN  - 1382-5585
CY  - Lisse
PB  - Swets & Zeitlinger
M1  - DZNE-2025-00369
SP  - 326 - 342
PY  - 2025
AB  - Navigational abilities decline with age, but the cognitive underpinnings of this cognitive decline remain partially understood. Navigation is guided by landmarks and self-motion cues, that we address when estimating our location. These sources of spatial information are often associated with noise and uncertainty, thus posing a challenge during navigation. To overcome this challenge, humans and other species rely on navigational cues according to their reliability: reliable cues are highly weighted and therefore strongly influence our spatial behavior, compared to less reliable ones. We hypothesize that older adults do not efficiently weigh spatial cues, and accordingly, the reliability levels of navigational cues may not modulate their spatial behavior, as with younger adults. To test this, younger and older adults performed a virtual navigational task, subject to modified reliability of landmarks and self-motion cues. The findings revealed that while increased reliability of spatial cues improved navigational performance across both age groups, older adults exhibited diminished sensitivity to changes in landmark reliability. The findings demonstrate a cognitive mechanism that could lead to impaired navigation abilities in older adults.
KW  - Humans
KW  - Cues
KW  - Spatial Navigation: physiology
KW  - Aged
KW  - Male
KW  - Young Adult
KW  - Female
KW  - Adult
KW  - Aging: physiology
KW  - Space Perception: physiology
KW  - Middle Aged
KW  - Reproducibility of Results
KW  - Aged, 80 and over
KW  - Cognitive aging (Other)
KW  - Navigation (Other)
KW  - cue-reliability (Other)
KW  - landmarks (Other)
KW  - self-motion (Other)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:39140595
DO  - DOI:10.1080/13825585.2024.2387362
UR  - https://pub.dzne.de/record/277306
ER  -