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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Working memory, cues, and wayfinding in older women | | Author(s) | Rebecca L Davis, Barbara A Therrien, Brady T West |
| Journal title | Journal of Applied Gerontology, vol 28, no 6, December 2009 |
| Pages | pp 723-742 |
| Source | http://jag.sagepub.com |
| Keywords | Older women ; Walking ; Learning capacity ; Mental clarity ; Physical environment ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Individuals create cognitive maps based on relationships between cues in the environment. Older individuals are often impaired in wayfinding, especially in environments that lack distinctive features. This study examines how working memory ability in older women is related to wayfinding performance in the presence of salient (distinctive, prominent) or non-salient cues. The degree of salient cue complexity is also examined, thus leading to the hypothesis that salient, complex cues are important in wayfinding and that working memory capacity is related to wayfinding performance. The virtual computer-generated arena is used to test this hypothesis in 20 healthy older women in three different environmental cue conditions varying in salience and complexity. Data analyses indicate that older women perform best in salient cue conditions. A greater working memory capacity is related to improved performance in the non-salient cue condition. These findings offer preliminary evidence that cue salience is especially important in wayfinding. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100301210 A |
| Classmark | BD: HSA: DE: DF: R: 3F: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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