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Previous studies have reported an age-related decline in spatial abilities. However, little is known about whether the presence of other, task-irrelevant stimuli during learning further affects spatial cognition in older adults. Here we embedded virtual environments with moving crowds of virtual human pedestrians (Experiment 1) or objects (Experiment 2) whilst participants learned a route and landmarks embedded along that route. In subsequent test trials we presented clips from the learned route and measured spatial memory using three different tasks: a route direction task (i.e. whether the video clip shown was a repetition or retracing of the learned route); an intersection direction task; and a task involving identity of the next landmark encountered. In both experiments, spatial memory was tested in two separate sessions: first following learning of an empty maze environment and second using a different maze which was populated. Older adults performed worse than younger adults in all tasks. Moreover, the presence of crowds during learning resulted in a cost in performance to the spatial tasks relative to the ‘no crowds’ condition in older adults but not in younger adults. In contrast, crowd distractors did not affect performance on the landmark sequence task. There was no age-related cost on performance with object distractors. These results suggest that crowds of human pedestrians selectively capture older adults’ attention during learning. These findings offer further insights into how spatial memory is affected by the ageing process, particularly in scenarios which are representative of real-world situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence suggests that familiarity with an environment may protect against spatial memory decline for familiar objects in older adults. We investigated whether a familiar context also reduces age-related decline in spatial memory for novel objects. Twenty-four younger and 23 older participants viewed a virtual rendering of a local environment along two different routes, each through a well-known (West) or lesser-known (East) area within the environment. Older and younger participants reported being more familiar with one (i.e. West) area than the other. In each trial, participants were presented with one route and were instructed to learn ten novel objects and their locations along the route. Following learning, participants immediately completed five test blocks: an object recognition task, an egocentric spatial processing (direction judgement) task, an allocentric spatial processing (proximity judgement) task and two pen-and-paper tests to measure cognitive mapping abilities. First we found an age effect with worse performance by older than younger adults in all spatial tasks, particularly in allocentric spatial processing. However, our results suggested better memory for objects and directions, but not proximity judgements, when the task was associated with more familiar than unfamiliar contexts, in both age groups. There was no benefit of context when a separate young adult group ( N = 24) was tested, who reported being equally familiar with both areas. These results suggest an important facilitatory role of context familiarity on object recognition, and in particular egocentric spatial memory, and have implications for enhancing spatial memory in older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]