Age Differences in Extrapersonal Orientation as Measured by Performance on the Locomotor Maze

Abstract

Sixteen healthy community residing elderly adults and 16 university students completed the Locomotor Maze test of extrapersonal orientation. They were given maps with nine location dots in a 3 × 3 matrix that corresponded to nine red discs on the floor of the experimental room. Participants were asked to walk the path outlined on each map without turning the map. Six maps were presented with paths increasing one segment in length with each subsequent map. The older adults committed more errors on the longer maps and took more time to make direction choices than young people. Because participants were free to consult the map throughout each trial, reliance on memory for landmaks and routes that characterizes earlier research was eliminated. It is suggested that the decreased performance shown by elderly adults on this task may be due to difficulty with working memory and mental rotation or increased field dependence.