Age-related differences in visual encoding and response strategies contribute to spatial memory deficits

Successful navigation requires the ability to memorise and recognise the locations of objects across different perspectives. Although these abilities rely on hippocampal functioning that is susceptible to degeneration in older adults, little is known about the effects of ageing on encoding and response strategies that are used to recognise spatial configurations. To investigate this, we asked young and older participants to encode the locations of objects in a virtual room shown as a picture on a computer screen. Then, we asked participants to view a second picture of the same room taken from the same (0°) or a different perspective (45° or 135°), and judge whether the objects occupied the same or different locations. Results revealed that older adults had overall greater difficulty with the task than younger adults and that the introduction of perspective shift between encoding and testing impaired performance in both age groups. With diffusion modelling we also found that older adults adopted a more conservative response strategy while the analysis of gaze patterns revealed an age-related shift in visual encoding strategies with older adults attending to more information when memorising the positions of objects in space.