Attentional demands during a goal-directed blind navigation task in young and older adults

Abstract

Spatial navigation is a common yet very important activity in everyday life. Errors in navigation, which usually involve miscalculations of distance and direction, derive from a variety of deficits, including neurological diseases, injuries, as well as aging. In a navigation task designed to assess the ability to reach a target location without vision, young and older adults showed statistically significant age differences in dual-task costs. It was also shown that dual-task costs vary as a function of task condition. Specifically, the navigation measures (traveled distance, angular deviation and body rotation) were significantly larger in older than young adults. There was no significant effect of task on those measures, with the exception of traveled distance. Conversely, the effect of age on reaction times was non-significant, but there was a main effect of condition on reaction time, with reaction times being significantly longer during the dual-task condition than during the sitting condition.