The Effects of Attentional Engagement on Route Learning Performance in a Virtual Environment: An Aging Study

Reducing younger and older adults' spatial disorientation during indoor-outdoor transitions: Effects of route alignment and visual access on wayfinding

Getting lost could lead to frustration, anxiety, and even fatal accidents. Previous research primarily focused on disorientation in indoor or outdoor environments separately. The indoor-outdoor transition received little attention, yet it is in this complex transition that individuals often lose their way. Therefore, the effects of indoor-outdoor route alignment, visual access, and age on wayfinding performance and spatial cognition were examined. Twenty older adults (aged 18-25) and twenty young adults (aged 65-82) participated in an experiment through desktop Virtual Reality (VR). They traversed indoor-outdoor environments and were informed within a building to quickly navigate an item inside another building. They also drew the route map. Participants repeated tasks in four different environments. Their spatial cognition and wayfinding performance were analyzed. Four main findings were derived. Firstly, the accuracy of global representation of the routes in the indoor-outdoor route alignment environment was higher than that in the non-aligned environment. Secondly, in environments with higher visual access, the accuracy of global representation of the routes for older adults was higher than that with lower visual access. Thirdly, enhancing visual access attenuated the negative impact of the non-aligned route on global representation of the routes. This effect is particularly beneficial for older adults. Fourthly, the younger adults outperformed the older adults in both wayfinding performance and global representation of the routes in indoor-outdoor environments. This difference could potentially be attributed to variations in education level, mental rotation ability, and digital experience. These findings provide valuable implications for urban design and wayfinding strategies.

The relationship between environmental context and attentional engagement in podcast listening experiences

Introduction

Previous research has shown that podcasts are most frequently consumed using mobile listening devices across a wide variety of environmental, situational, and social contexts. To date, no studies have investigated how an individual's environmental context might influence their attentional engagement in podcast listening experiences. Improving understanding of the contexts in which episodes of listening take place, and how they might affect listener engagement, could be highly valuable to researchers and producers working in the fields of object-based and personalized media.

Methods

An online questionnaire on listening habits and behaviors was distributed to a sample of 264 podcast listeners. An exploratory factor analysis was run to identify factors of environmental context that influence attentional engagement in podcast listening experiences. Five aspects of podcast listening engagement were also defined and measured across the sample.

Results

The exploratory factor analysis revealed five factors of environmental context labeled as: outdoors, indoors & at home, evenings, soundscape & at work, and exercise. The aspects of podcast listening engagement provided a comprehensive quantitative account of contemporary podcast listening experiences.

Discussion

The results presented support the hypothesis that elements of a listener's environmental context can influence their attentional engagement in podcast listening experiences. The soundscape & at work factor suggests that some listeners actively choose to consume podcasts to mask disturbing stimuli in their surrounding soundscape. Further analysis suggested that the proposed factors of environmental context were positively correlated with the measured aspects of podcast listening engagement. The results are highly pertinent to the fields of podcast studies, mobile listening experiences, and personalized media, and provide a basis for researchers seeking to explore how other forms of listening context might influence attentional engagement.

Applicability of an immersive virtual reality system for assessing route learning in older adults

Spatial orientation is defined as the ability to find one’s way around an environment, follow familiar routes, recognize places, and learn new routes. Spatial disorientation is one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and traditional cognitive evaluation lacks ecological validity. Therefore, new assessment methods are needed for the early identification of this cognitive impairment.

Ageing- and dementia-friendly design: theory and evidence from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and environmental psychology can contribute to design guidelines that minimise spatial disorientation

Many older people, both with and without dementia, eventually move from their familiar home environments into unfamiliar surroundings, such as sheltered housing or care homes. Age-related declines in wayfinding skills can make it difficult to learn to navigate in these new, unfamiliar environments. To facilitate the transition to their new accommodation, it is therefore important to develop retirement complexes and care homes specifically designed to reduce the wayfinding difficulties of older people and those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Residential complexes that are designed to support spatial orientation and that compensate for impaired navigation abilities would make it easier for people with dementia to adapt to their new living environment. This would improve the independence, quality of life and well-being of residents, and reduce the caregivers’ workload. Based on these premises, this opinion paper considers how evidence from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and environmental psychology can contribute to ageing- and dementia-friendly design with a view to minimising spatial disorientation. After an introduction of the cognitive mechanisms and processes involved in spatial navigation, and the changes that occur in typical and atypical ageing, research from the field of environmental psychology is considered, highlighting design factors likely to facilitate (or impair) indoor wayfinding in complex buildings. Finally, psychological theories and design knowledge are combined to suggest ageing- and dementia-friendly design guidelines that aim to minimise spatial disorientation by focusing on residual navigation skills.

Effects of practice on visuo-spatial attention in a wayfinding task

Several studies have evaluated the distribution of visuo-spatial attention in a wayfinding task, using gaze direction as an indicator for the locus of attention. We extended that work by evaluating how visuo-spatial attention is modified by wayfinding practice. Young and older participants followed prescribed routes through a virtual city on six trials. Each trial was followed by a route recall test, where participants saw screenshots of intersections encountered, and had to indicate which way to proceed. Behavioral and gaze data were registered in those tests. Wayfinding accuracy increased from trial to trial, more so in young than in older persons. Total gaze time, mean fixation time, and the vertical scatter of fixations decreased from trial to trial, similarly in young and older persons. The horizontal scatter of fixations did not differ between trials and age groups. The incidence of fixations on the subsequently chosen side also did not differ between trials, but it increased in older age. We interpret these findings as evidence that as wayfinding practice increased, participants gradually narrowed their attentional focus to the most relevant screenshot area, processed information within this focus more efficiently, reduced the total time in which attention dwelled on the rejected side of the screenshot, but maintained the total time on the chosen side. These dynamic changes of visuo-spatial attention were comparable in young and older participants. However, it appears that decision-making differed between age groups: older persons’ attention dwelled longer on the chosen side before they made their choice.

Differential Brain Activity in Regions Linked to Visuospatial Processing During Landmark-Based Navigation in Young and Healthy Older Adults

Older adults have difficulties in navigating unfamiliar environments and updating their wayfinding behavior when faced with blocked routes. This decline in navigational capabilities has traditionally been ascribed to memory impairments and dysexecutive function, whereas the impact of visual aging has often been overlooked. The ability to perceive visuospatial information such as salient landmarks is essential to navigating efficiently. To date, the functional and neurobiological factors underpinning landmark processing in aging remain insufficiently characterized. To address this issue, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the brain activity associated with landmark-based navigation in young and healthy older participants. The performances of 25 young adults (μ = 25.4 years, σ = 2.7; seven females) and 17 older adults (μ = 73.0 years, σ = 3.9; 10 females) were assessed in a virtual-navigation task in which they had to orient using salient landmarks. The underlying whole-brain patterns of activity as well as the functional roles of specific cerebral regions involved in landmark processing, namely the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the occipital place area (OPA), and the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), were analyzed. Older adults' navigational abilities were overall diminished compared to young adults. Also, the two age groups relied on distinct navigational strategies to solve the task. Better performances during landmark-based navigation were associated with increased neural activity in an extended neural network comprising several cortical and cerebellar regions. Direct comparisons between age groups revealed that young participants had greater anterior temporal activity. Also, only young adults showed significant activity in occipital areas corresponding to the cortical projection of the central visual field during landmark-based navigation. The region-of-interest analysis revealed an increased OPA activation in older adult participants during the landmark condition. There were no significant between-group differences in PPA and RSC activations. These preliminary results hint at the possibility that aging diminishes fine-grained information processing in occipital and temporal regions, thus hindering the capacity to use landmarks adequately for navigation. Keeping sight of its exploratory nature, this work helps towards a better comprehension of the neural dynamics subtending landmark-based navigation and it provides new insights on the impact of age-related visuospatial processing differences on navigation capabilities.

Are age-related deficits in route learning related to control of visual attention?

Typically aged adults show reduced ability to learn a route compared to younger adults. In this experiment, we investigate the role of visual attention through eye-tracking and engagement of attentional resources in age-related route learning deficits. Participants were shown a route through a realistic virtual environment before being tested on their route knowledge. Younger and older adults were compared on their gaze behaviour during route learning and on their reaction time to a secondary probe task as a measure of attentional engagement. Behavioural results show a performance deficit in route knowledge for older adults compared to younger adults, which is consistent with previous research. We replicated previous findings showing that reaction times to the secondary probe task were longer at decision points than non-decision points, indicating stronger attentional engagement at navigationally relevant locations. However, we found no differences in attentional engagement and no differences for a range of gaze measures between age groups. We conclude that age-related changes in route learning ability are not reflected in changes in control of visual attention or regulation of attentional engagement.

How age relates to spatial navigation performance: Functional and methodological considerations

Aging effects have often been reported for spatial navigation performance. Moreover, navigation performance is thought to be an early marker of pathological aging. Yet, the cognitive complexity of navigation and large individual variation in healthy population make it difficult to pinpoint the precise aging mechanisms involved. We performed a systematic literature review with specific attention to functional dissociation between the tasks used and methodological characteristics. The literature search resulted in 39 articles in which age comparisons were made for large-scale navigation measures. Outcomes were categorized into the domains of landmark, location (egocentric and allocentric), and path knowledge (route and survey). Results indicate that clear functional dissociation exists between these navigation knowledge domains. Aging effects are found for path knowledge most convincingly, while landmark and egocentric location knowledge are frequently omitted in assessment. The participant samples reported often neglect adult, middle aged participants, while this group could be highly informative to the aging process as well. Moreover, having a clear image of age-related performance across the lifespan could be a valuable addition towards the early detection of pathological aging through navigation performance.

The contribution of visual attention and declining verbal memory abilities to age-related route learning deficits

Our ability to learn unfamiliar routes declines in typical and atypical ageing. The reasons for this decline, however, are not well understood. Here we used eye-tracking to investigate how ageing affects people's ability to attend to navigationally relevant information and to select unique objects as landmarks. We created short routes through a virtual environment, each comprised of four intersections with two objects each, and we systematically manipulated the saliency and uniqueness of these objects. While salient objects might be easier to memorise than non-salient objects, they cannot be used as reliable landmarks if they appear more than once along the route. As cognitive ageing affects executive functions and control of attention, we hypothesised that the process of selecting navigationally relevant objects as landmarks might be affected as well. The behavioural data showed that younger participants outperformed the older participants and the eye-movement data revealed some systematic differences between age groups. Specifically, older adults spent less time looking at the unique, and therefore navigationally relevant, landmark objects. Both young and older participants, however, effectively directed gaze towards the unique and away from the non-unique objects, even if these were more salient. These findings highlight specific age-related differences in the control of attention that could contribute to declining route learning abilities in older age. Interestingly, route-learning performance in the older age group was more variable than in the young age group with some older adults showing performance similar to the young group. These individual differences in route learning performance were strongly associated with verbal and episodic memory abilities.

Extrahippocampal Contributions to Age-Related Changes in Spatial Navigation Ability

Age-related decline in spatial navigation is well-known and the extant literature emphasizes the important contributions of a hippocampus-dependent spatial navigation system in mediating this decline. However, navigation is a multifaceted cognitive domain and some aspects of age-related navigational decline may be mediated by extrahippocampal brain regions and/or systems. The current review presents an overview of some key cognitive domains that contribute to the age-related changes in spatial navigation ability, and elucidates such domains in the context of an increased engagement of navigationally relevant extrahippocampal brain regions with advancing age. Specifically, this review focuses on age-related declines in three main areas: (i) allocentric strategy use and switching between egocentric and allocentric strategies, (ii) associative learning of landmarks/locations and heading directions, and (iii) executive functioning and attention. Thus far, there is accumulating neuroimaging evidence supporting the functional relevance of the striatum for egocentric/response strategy use in older adults, and of the prefrontal cortex for mediating executive functions that contribute to successful navigational performance. Notably, the functional role of the prefrontal cortex was particularly emphasized via the proposed relevance of the fronto-locus coeruleus noradrenergic system for strategy switching and of the fronto-hippocampal circuit for landmark-direction associative learning. In view of these putative prefrontal contributions to navigation-related functions, we recommend future spatial navigation studies to adopt a systems-oriented approach that investigates age-related alterations in the interaction between the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and extrahippocampal regions, as well as an individual differences approach that clarifies the differential engagement of prefrontal executive processes among older adults.