Coding of Spatial Information by Young and Elderly Adults

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Abstract
Two experiments are reported in which the presumed automatic nature of spatial coding is examined. In experiment 1, 48 young and 48 elderly female adults, half of each group aware and half unaware of the task requirements, studied 16 cards with four nouns arranged vertically on each card. They were then given these 64 targets, as well as 64 distractors, and were required to sort the targets into one of four input spatial locations and to discard distractors. Awareness of the location requirement had no effect on performance and the two age groups were equivalent with respect to overall spatial memory accuracy. In a second experiment, 40 young and 40 elderly unaware female adults were shown 64 cards with one noun per card in one of four spatial locations. There were no reliable age differences in location performance; the young adults, however, exhibited superior free recall.

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