Study title

We created two virtual environments, each comprised of one intersection but with different landmark settings: in the Identical Landmark environment, the intersection contained visually monotonic features whereas in the Different Landmarks environment, the intersection contained visually distinctive features. For each environment, a young and an older participant group was presented with two short routes that traverse through that intersection. To test route integration abilities, participants were asked to either repeat the routes, to navigate the routes from the destination to the starting place or to navigate between all other combinations of starting place and destination of the original. Route integration is an important process for the generation of cognitive maps, thus successful navigation, which is known to be affected by ageing. Here we present a novel task to study the effects of cognitive ageing on the integration of route knowledge into cognitive map-like spatial knowledge. Results demonstrate better performance in the Different Landmark environment in both the young and older participant group. Interestingly, a subgroup of the older participants who demonstrated lower MoCA scores could not finish the experiment or did not reach the required performance criterion which suggests that the introduced task is sensitive to the earliest signs of cognitive impairment.Knowing where we are and how to get to places are fundamental features of successful everyday living. Although most of us rely automatically and unquestioningly on our wayfinding abilities, they are markedly impaired in people with Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most prevalent form of dementia. This project will identify the features of buildings that make them relatively harder or easier for people with AD to navigate. The knowledge gained will allow us to create dementia-friendly architectural guidelines for use in the design of residences for people with AD. Many people with AD eventually...