title: Introducing a new age-and-cognition-sensitive measurement for assessing spatial orientation using a landmark-less virtual reality navigational task.
abstract: Age-related impairments during spatial navigation have been widely reported in egocentric and allocentric paradigms. However, the effect of age on more specific navigational components such as the ability to drive or update directional information has not received enough attention. In this study we investigated the effect of age on spatial updating of a visual target after a series of whole-body rotations and transitions using a novel landmark-less virtual reality (VR) environment. Moreover, a significant number of previous studies focused on measures susceptible to a general decline in motor skills such as the spent time navigating, the distance traversed. The current paper proposes a new compound spatial measure to assess navigational performance, examines its reliability and compares its power with those of the measures of duration and traversed distance in predicting participants' age and cognitive groups assessed by Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores. Using data from 319 adults (20-83 years), our results confirm the reliability, the age sensitivity, and the cognitive validity of the designed spatial measure as well as its superiority to the measures of duration and traversed distance in predicting age and MoCA score. In addition, the results show the significant effect of age cognitive status on spatial updating.
authors.affiliation: a Biomedical Engineering program , University of Manitoba , Winnipeg , MB , Canada.
authors.forename: Omid
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ranjbar Pouya
authors.affiliation: b Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering , University of Manitoba , Winnipeg , MB , Canada.
authors.forename: Ahmad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Byagowi
authors.affiliation: c Department of Psychology , University of Manitoba , Winnipeg , MB , Canada.
authors.forename: Debbie M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.affiliation: a Biomedical Engineering program , University of Manitoba , Winnipeg , MB , Canada.|d Research Affiliate , Riverview Health Center , Winnipeg , MB , Canada.
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Moussavi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009949:Orientation; D000072458:Orientation, Spatial / Q000502:physiology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D065854:Spatial Navigation / Q000502:physiology*; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Ageing; Measurement; Spatial cognition; Spatial orientation; Virtual reality navigation