Mental representation from spatial descriptions: the role of age and visuo-spatial abilities.

This study investigates how age and visuo-spatial abilities modulate the processing of environment information acquired through spatial description in survey and route perspectives. A question still debated in the literature is how far mental representation preserves the spatial perspective of text learned, if at all, and which factors influence its construction, reducing or increasing perspective-dependence. Among the factors influencing mental representation characteristics, age and visuo-spatial abilities can be assumed to play a significant role. To date, however, no studies have directly examined whether the effect of spatial perspective is modulated by age and visuo-spatial abilities. A group of 34 young (20-30-year-olds), 34 middle-aged (50-60-year-olds) and 32 older adults (60-70-year-olds) listened to spatial descriptions of open environments in both route and survey perspectives. Recall was tested by means of true/false sentence verification test, free recall and map drawing. A series of visuo-spatial measures was also administered. Results showed that young adults performed better on visuo-spatial tasks and on all text recall tasks than middle-aged and older adults. Furthermore, verification test results showed that all participants, independently of their age, built a perspective-dependent mental representation especially for route text: after studying a route text they performed better route than survey sentences. The correlation analyses showed that age and visuo-spatial abilities were significantly related to recall tasks performance (free recall and map drawing) after participants learnt a text in survey and route perspective. Overall, results indicate that spatial text recall is impaired in middle-aged and older individuals although all participants built a perspective-dependent (for route text) mental representation sustained by visuo-spatial abilities.