Age Differences in the Acquisition and Retention of Flexible Navigation Behaviors

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Difficulties finding one’s way in novel environments may lead to anxiety and restrictions in daily activities for older adults. There is a substantial literature documenting age-related deficits in spatial navigation, with particular deficits observed in the acquisition, retrieval and use of a cognitive map of the environment relative to route learning. This is particularly problematic as cognitive mapping permits more flexible navigation, such as taking shortcuts. However, the most common design involves learning and retrieval in a single session. However, the typical study design used in this literature involves learning and retrieving a novel virtual environment in a single session, which could lead to an under-estimation of the full navigation capacities of older adults. Thus, we have gained knowledge of the nature of age deficits in cognitive mapping in the early phases of acquisition and retrieval, but we now need an enhanced understanding of the evolution of older adults’ environmental knowledge and flexible navigation behaviors over more extended time frames, which is more similar to our everyday navigation. Our underlying model is that age-related limitations in processing speed as well as in attentional control and associative processes slow acquisition of relevant associative details of an environment thereby limiting flexible navigation; as well as contribute to greater forgetting and impaired retrieval of this knowledge and thus a reduction in flexible navigation after an extended delay. We will test this model in a paradigm that entails study-test trials across 3 days and a 2-week retention interval. During study, participants will take a “tour” of our city art museum. During test, measures of environmental knowledge and flexible navigation will be obtained. Our experiment will be conducted in a real-world environment as this provides a strong foundation for acquisition, flexible navigation and retention for older adults. Furthermore, it is estimated that around 20-30% of healthy older adults have elevated Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology (i.e., preclinical AD). Enhanced understanding of whether there are specific patterns of acquisition or enhanced forgetting over time in preclinical AD would be useful in developing more sensitive cognitive indicators of the earliest disease stages. In addition, the presence of AD pathology is generally not taken into account in much of the healthy aging literature on spatial navigation. Thus, what is considered an “aging” deficit may to some degree reflect the preclinical AD stage. Thus, the proposed research will determine (1) the pattern of age differences in acquisition and use of a cognitive map over multiple learning episodes; (2) the pattern of age differences in long-term retention and use of a cognitive map; and (3) the role of AD pathology in acquisition and retention of a cognitive map. We will secondarily consider the roles of basic cognitive abilities (i.e., processing speed, attentional control and associative learning), visual attention, and sleep quality as potential contributing factors to spatial navigation deficits. Collectively, these aims will provide a strong basis for programmatic research investigating an array of encoding and retention manipulations to enhance cognitive mapping in older adults. Examining the role of AD pathology provides a foundation for additional cognitive tools for distinguishing healthy aging from the very earliest stages of AD.