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Effects of Orientation Change on Spatial Learning of Novel Environments on Younger and Older Adults

Fox, Michael J

Abstract Details

2014, Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, College of Sciences and Health Professions.
Yamamoto and DeGirolamo (2012) found that increasing age has unequal effects of impairment on spatial learning dependent on the perspective in which an environment is learned. Further, the learned condition of ground-level perspective (first-person exploratory) showed greater decline in elderly participants than was found in aerial (map reading) conditions. These results supported previous research involving fMRI scans implicating the medial temporal lobe (MTL) role in exploratory navigation of novel environments and MRI scans indicating MTL atrophy with age. However, Yamamoto and DeGirolamo (2012) did not consider the effects of conducting the experiment with one condition being presented with changing orientation (ground-level) and the other condition having fixed orientation (aerial). Utilizing new research revealing the MTL’s role in orientation processing, the present study reexamined Yamamoto and DeGirolamo (2012) findings with the introduction of the condition aerial-with-turns (map reading with changing orientation). The findings of this experiment suggest changing orientation in the learning condition has greater impact on elderly participants’ performance of spatial learning tasks than that of the perspective in which the learning condition is in.
Naohide Yamamoto, PhD (Advisor)
Andrew Slifkin, PhD (Committee Member)
Katherine Judge, PhD (Committee Member)

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Fox, M. J. (2014). Effects of Orientation Change on Spatial Learning of Novel Environments on Younger and Older Adults [Master's thesis, Cleveland State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1420839362

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Fox, Michael. Effects of Orientation Change on Spatial Learning of Novel Environments on Younger and Older Adults. 2014. Cleveland State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1420839362.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Fox, Michael. "Effects of Orientation Change on Spatial Learning of Novel Environments on Younger and Older Adults." Master's thesis, Cleveland State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1420839362

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)