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Age-related preference for geometric spatial cues during real-world navigation

Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 88–99 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ageing effects on spatial navigation are characterized mainly in terms of impaired allocentric strategies. However, an alternative hypothesis is that navigation difficulties in aged people are associated with deficits in processing and encoding spatial cues. We tested this hypothesis by studying how geometry and landmark cues control navigation in young and older adults in a real, ecological environment. Recordings of body and gaze dynamics revealed a preference for geometry-based navigation in older adults, and for landmark-based navigation in younger ones. While cue processing was associated with specific fixation patterns, advanced age manifested itself in a longer reorientation time, reflecting an unbalanced exploration–exploitation trade-off in scanning policies. Moreover, a battery of tests revealed a specific cognitive deficit in older adults with geometric preference. These results suggest that allocentric strategy deficits in ageing can result from difficulties related to landmark coding, and predict recovery of allocentric strategies in geometrically polarized environments.

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Fig. 1: The real, ecological experimental set-up and the spatial task.
Fig. 2: Preference for geometric cues in older adults.
Fig. 3: Spatial navigation performance of young versus older adults during learning.
Fig. 4: Spatiotemporal signatures of visual fixational patterns predict landmark versus geometry cue preference.
Fig. 5: Spatial distribution of visual fixations as a function of cue preference.
Fig. 6: Age- and cue preference-related differences in visual fixation characteristics.
Fig. 7: Visual and cognitive correlates of geometric preference in ageing.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

All custom software can be found at http://www.aging-vision-action.fr/ava_files/silversight/custom.software.zip.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by ANR—Essilor SilverSight Chair No. ANR-14-CHIN-0001. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We thank S. Mohand-Said of the Clinical Investigation Centre of the Quinze-Vingts Hospital, Paris, for medical supervision during clinical screening of participants. We also thank K. Lagrené and A.-R. Bourefis, from the Aging in Vision and Action laboratory at Vision Institute, for helping in enrolling/profiling the participants and for assistance in performing the experiments, respectively. Finally, the authors wish to thank E. Gutman, J. Lebrun and C. Authié of the Streetlab team for technical support in setting up the experiments in the Streetlab platform.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sorbonne Université, INSERM, CNRS, Institut de la Vision, Paris, France

    Marcia Bécu, Denis Sheynikhovich, Guillaume Tatur, Catherine Persephone Agathos, Luca Leonardo Bologna, José-Alain Sahel & Angelo Arleo

  2. Institute of Biophysics, National Research Council, Palermo, Italy

    Luca Leonardo Bologna

  3. CHNO des Quinze-Vingts, INSERM-DGOS CIC 1423, Paris, France

    José-Alain Sahel

  4. Fondation Ophtalmologique Rothschild, Paris, France

    José-Alain Sahel

  5. Department of Ophthalmology, The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    José-Alain Sahel

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  1. Marcia Bécu
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Contributions

M.B., D.S., L.L.B., J.-A.S. and A.A. designed the experiment. M.B., G.T., C.P.A. and L.L.B. collected and analysed the data. M.B., D.S., C.P.A., J.-A.S. and A.A. wrote the article.

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Correspondence to Marcia Bécu or Angelo Arleo.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Results, Supplementary Discussion, Supplementary Figs. 1–12, Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, and Supplementary References.

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Supplementary Video 1

Streetlab platform at the Vision Institute: an ecological street-like environment used to assess navigation under fully controlled conditions. The experimental environment consisted of a rectangular enclosure (aspect ratio, 1.99) with 19 realistic panels providing real-world wall textures that fully covered the walls of the enclosure. Both whole-body and eye motion were recorded (at 120 and 60 Hz, respectively) as subjects navigated around the obstacle-free environment.

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Bécu, M., Sheynikhovich, D., Tatur, G. et al. Age-related preference for geometric spatial cues during real-world navigation. Nat Hum Behav 4, 88–99 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0718-z

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