ArticlePsychological research2020
Are age-related deficits in route learning related to control of visual attention?
Article in Psychological research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Understanding the return journey: Determinants of route retracing in younger and older adults.Psychology and aging · 2025Article
- Fixation-related potentials during mobile map assisted navigation in the real world: The effect of landmark visualization style.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Article
- Influence of eye movements on academic performance: A bibliometric and citation network analysis.Journal of eye movement research · 2022Article
- Effects of practice on visuo-spatial attention in a wayfinding task.Psychological research · 2021Article
- From repeating routes to planning novel routes: the impact of landmarks and ageing on route integration and cognitive mapping.Psychological research · 2021Article
- Age-related differences in visual encoding and response strategies contribute to spatial memory deficits.Memory & cognition · 2021Article
- Spatial Disorientation in Alzheimer's Disease: The Missing Path From Virtual Reality to Real World.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2020Article
- Differences in Encoding Strategy as a Potential Explanation for Age-Related Decline in Place Recognition Ability.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Typically aged adults show reduced ability to learn a route compared to younger adults. In this experiment, we investigate the role of visual attention through eye-tracking and engagement of attentional resources in age-related route learning deficits. Participants were shown a route through a realistic virtual environment before being tested on their route knowledge. Younger and older adults were compared on their gaze behaviour during route learning and on their reaction time to a secondary probe task as a measure of attentional engagement. Behavioural results show a performance deficit in route knowledge for older adults compared to younger adults, which is consistent with previous research. We replicated previous findings showing that reaction times to the secondary probe task were longer at decision points than non-decision points, indicating stronger attentional engagement at navigationally relevant locations. However, we found no differences in attentional engagement and no differences for a range of gaze measures between age groups. We conclude that age-related changes in route learning ability are not reflected in changes in control of visual attention or regulation of attentional engagement.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.