Differences in Encoding Strategy as a Potential Explanation for Age-Related Decline in Place Recognition Ability
The ability to recognise places is known to deteriorate with advancing age. In this study, we investigated the contribution of age-related changes in spatial encoding strategies to declining place recognition ability. We recorded eye movements while younger and older adults completed a place recogni...
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Published in | Frontiers in psychology Vol. 11; p. 2182 |
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Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Frontiers Media S.A
10.09.2020
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The ability to recognise places is known to deteriorate with advancing age. In this study, we investigated the contribution of age-related changes in spatial encoding strategies to declining place recognition ability. We recorded eye movements while younger and older adults completed a place recognition task first described by
Muffato et al. (2019)
. Participants first learned places, which were defined by an array of four objects, and then decided whether the next place they were shown was the same or different to the one they learned. Places could be shown from the same spatial perspective as during learning or from a shifted perspective (30° or 60°). Places that were different to those during learning were changed either by substituting an object in the place with a novel object or by swapping the locations of two objects. We replicated the findings of
Muffato et al. (2019)
showing that sensitivity to detect changes in a place declined with advancing age and declined when the spatial perspective was shifted. Additionally, older adults were particularly impaired on trials in which object locations were swapped; however, they were not differentially affected by perspective changes compared to younger adults. During place encoding, older adults produced more fixations and saccades, shorter fixation durations, and spent less time looking at objects compared to younger adults. Further, we present an analysis of gaze chaining, designed to capture spatio-temporal aspects of gaze behaviour. The chaining measure was a significant predictor of place recognition performance. We found significant differences between age groups on the chaining measure and argue that these differences in gaze behaviour are indicative of differences in encoding strategy between age groups. In summary, we report a direct replication of
Muffato et al. (2019)
and provide evidence for age-related differences in spatial encoding strategies, which are related to place recognition performance. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 David Copeland, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, United States Christopher Hilton orcid.org/0000-0002-3519-033X ORCID Reviewed by: Herbert Heuer, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo), Germany orcid.org/0000-0003-2696-4871 Veronica Muffato orcid.org/0000-0001-9386-6935 Jan Wiener This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Edited by: Richard A. Abrams, Washington University in St. Louis, United States orcid.org/0000-0002-9583-298X Sebastien Miellet |
ISSN: | 1664-1078 1664-1078 |
DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02182 |