Pointing to an Allocentric and Egocentric Remembered Target in Younger and Older Adults

Abstract

Previous reports have shown that older adults have difficulties in maintaining allocentric information in memory but not egocentric information. The present study evaluated pointing accuracy in younger and older adults for egocentric and allocentric task. The task was to localize and maintain one, two, or four target locations. Target(s) were presented with or without a surrounding white square in a dimly lit environment. Despite previous postulations, the results of the present study revealed that older adults were able to point to remembered egocentric and allocentric targets as accurately as younger adults regardless of task difficulty. However, older adults took more time pointing to allocentric targets as compared to younger adults. The longer movement time was caused by a lengthening of the deceleration phase, suggesting that during pointing, older adults rely more on visual information surrounding the target than younger adults.

This study was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NS39352 and NS40266).

Notes

¹Constant and variable errors for the horizontal and vertical axis have also been computed separately. The results of the statistical analyses computed on these variables were similar to radial and variable errors and did not modify the interpretation of the data.