A Comparison of Younger and Older Adults' Spatial Navigation Strategies in Virtual Reality
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Kemp, Megan Olivia
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Many studies agree that younger and older adults differ in their spatial navigation strategies and performance. Particularly, older adults tend to favor egocentric strategies over allocentric ones, possibly due to an overreliance on frontostriatal networks as the hippocampus declines with age. Stress also plays a role in navigation; particularly, under time pressure and when challenged with a novel task, we tend to stick to familiar routes instead of taking shortcuts in order to reach our end goal. Yet, very little research has examined the intersection between these aging and stress effects. This is important because evidence also shows that the stress response changes with age. The present study aims to further study age-related spatial navigation differences through a variety of virtual reality tasks, such as the Y-maze and dual-solution tasks, that show navigational preferences and performance through their behavioral results. Consistent with prior studies, my findings suggest that older adults rely more heavily on egocentric strategies while younger adults rely more on allocentric ones, although there is greater variance in navigational strategies among younger adults. In comparison to older adults, younger adults also show greater flexibility when navigating to their goals, sometimes favoring a shortcut over following a learned route. Older adults, on average, show lower cortisol levels than younger adults during the spatial navigation tasks, possibly due to less stress in navigating a familiar route (their dominant strategy), rather than attempting to take a novel shortcut.
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Undergraduate Research Option Thesis