Supporting route learning in older adults: the role of imagery strategy

Objectives: Route learning is an everyday spatial ability important to individuals’ independent living, and is known to decline with age. This study aimed to investigate the benefit of using an imagery strategy to support route learning in young and older adults. Methods: Forty young adults and 40 older adults learned a path from a video. Twenty of each age group were taught to use an imagery strategy (strategy groups [SGs]), while the others received no specific instructions (control groups [CGs]). Then participants were asked to recall the order and location of landmarks they had seen along the path (landmark ordering and locating tasks). Results: Young adults recalled the order and location of landmarks better than older adults, and the SGs outperformed the CGs regardless of age. The Age group x Learning group interaction was only significant for the landmark locating task, with the young CG performing better than the older CG, while the older SG proved as good at recalling landmark locations as the young SG. Further, it was only among the older adults that the SG outperformed the CG. Conclusion: These findings newly suggest that using imagery helps to sustain older adults’ route learning ability, especially in spatial recall tasks demanding the active manipulation of spatial information learnt, such as locating landmarks previously encountered while navigating a path. These results are discussed within the aging and spatial cognition frameworks.