Spatial reorientation decline in aging: the combination of geometry and landmarks

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The study is focused on the assessment of reorientation skills in a sample of community-dwelling elderly people, manipulating landmarks and geometric (layout) information.

Method: A neuropsychological assessment was administered to 286 elderly participants, divided into six groups (healthy controls, HC; four subgroups of participants with mild cognitive impairment, MCI; participants with probable dementia, Prob_D) and tested with the Virtual Reorientation Test (VReoT). VReoT manipulated different spatial cues: geometry and landmarks (proximal and distal).

Result: Compared with HC, participants with MCI and Prob_D showed to be impaired in tasks involving geometry, landmarks and a combination of them. Both single and multiple domain impairment in MCI had an impact on reorientation performance. Moreover, VReoT was marginally able to discriminate between amnesic and non-amnesic MCI. The occurrence of getting lost events seemed to be associated to learning of geometric information.

Conclusion: The associative strength between landmark and target plays an important role in affecting spatial orientation performance of cognitively impaired participants. Geometry significantly supports landmark information and becomes helpful with the increase of cognitive impairment which is linked to a decrement in landmark encoding. VReoT seems to represent a reliable evaluation supplement for spatial orientation deficits in prodromal stages of dementia.

KEYWORDS:

• Spatial navigation
• mild cognitive impairment
• reorientation
• geometry
• landmark

Acknowledgment

The first author was supported by the project ‘Epidemiology of Topographical Disorientation and Mild Cognitive Impairment in a South Italian elderly population’ – Action Co-founded by Cohesion and Development Fund 2007–2013 – APQ Research Puglia Region ‘Regional programme supporting smart specialization and social and environmental sustainability – FutureInResearch’ (A.O. Caffò, Grant Code CEY4SQ4), and the last author was supported by the project ‘An automatic system of verbal instructions to promote activities of daily living in patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment: Intervention effectiveness and manipulation of linguistic parameters’ (A. Bosco, Fondi Ateneo, Es. Fin. 2014).

6. Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Cohesion and Development Fund 2007–2013 – APQ Research Puglia Region “Regional programme supporting smart specialization and social and environmental sustainability – FutureInResearch” [grant number CEY4SQ4]; Fondi Ateneo University of Studies of Bari, Es. Fin. 2014 [grant number 301010104].