Efficiency of route selection as a function of adult age

Abstract

Two tasks hypothesized to assess the efficiency of route selection were administered to 328 adults ranging from 18 to 93 years of age. Increased age was associated with slower completion of mazes, even after adjusting for differences in perceptual-motor speed, and with longer and less accurate routes in a task in which participants were asked to visit designated exhibits in a zoo. The route selection measures were correlated with measures hypothesized to represent executive functioning, such as the number of categories in the Wisconsin card sorting test and the number of words generated in a category fluency test. However, most of the age-related influences on the measures from the route selection tasks were shared with age-related effects on established cognitive abilities, which implies that the same mechanisms may account for the relations of age on both sets of variables.

Review of safety and mobility issues among older pedestrians

“…This decrease in processing speed has been shown to be associated with a slow walking speed and a higher risk of falling (Holtzer et al, 2007;Owsley and McGwin, 2004;Rosano et al, 2012;Welmerink et al, 2010). A slower processing speed may also partly explain poorer navigation performance with aging (Kliegel et al, 2007;Salthouse and Siedlecki, 2007). Finally, because processing speed is necessary for making timely, correct decisions, it could also explain the longer start-up times of older pedestrians, as well as the link observed between the safeness of street-crossing decisions made in simulator experiments and scores on the UFOV ® test (Dommes and Cavallo, 2011;Dommes et al, 2013Dommes et al, , 2015.…”

“…Efficient navigation requires making decisions about how to reach a given destination while satisfying various constraints such as avoiding having to walk overly long distances or avoiding barriers (Salthouse and Siedlecki, 2007). This ability is typically tested with laboratory tasks such as the multiple errand test (Shallice and Burgess, 1991) or the zoo map task (Wilson et al, 1996), which require using a map provided to carry out certain activities (e.g., shopping, visiting people).…”

“…Older adults have been shown to place priority on motor control during dual-task walking, so as to avoid falling but at the expense of walking speed (Hollman et al, 2007) or talking (for a review, see Beurskens and Bock, 2012;Sparrow et al, 2002). In this line, the greater declines of executive functions in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease (da Costa et al, 2013) may be why these medical conditions are strongly associated with a higher risk of falling (Delbaere et al, 2012;Sheridan and Hausdorff, 2007), a higher risk of being injured during street crossing (Gorrie et al, 2008) and navigation difficulties in real-life or simulator studies (e.g., Kliegel et al, 2007;Salthouse and Siedlecki, 2007;Taillade et al, 2013).…”

Convergent Validity and Effect of Instruction Modification on the Groton Maze Learning Test: A New Measure of Spatial Working Memory and Error Monitoring

“…The Zoo Trip Test (ZTT; (Salthouse & Siedlecki, 2007;Wilson, Alderman, Burgess, Emslie, & Evans, 1996) is a pencil-and-paper measure of route selection efficiency and planning ability. It consists of two maps of fictional zoos, each with 13 different exhibits.…”

Type of activity and fitness benefits as moderators of the effect of physical activity on affect in advanced age: a review

“…its wake attrition in a wide variety of cognitive abilities [64]. Affect, on the other hand, may be altered throughout the life span-not necessarily as a function of the aging process per se but rather as a function of personal adjustment to health or other environmental factors [52].…”