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Let me be your guide: physical guidance improves spatial learning for older adults with simulated low vision

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Abstract

Monitoring one’s safety during low vision navigation demands limited attentional resources which may impair spatial learning of the environment. In studies of younger adults, we have shown that these mobility monitoring demands can be alleviated, and spatial learning subsequently improved, via the presence of a physical guide during navigation. The present study extends work with younger adults to an older adult sample with simulated low vision. We test the effect of physical guidance on improving spatial learning as well as general age-related changes in navigation ability. Participants walked with and without a physical guide on novel real-world paths in an indoor environment and pointed to remembered target locations. They completed concurrent measures of cognitive load on the trials. Results demonstrate an improvement in learning under low vision conditions with a guide compared to walking without a guide. However, our measure of cognitive load did not vary between guidance conditions. We also conducted a cross-age comparison and found support for age-related declines in spatial learning generally and greater effects of physical guidance with increasing age.

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Notes

  1. A different group of 14 older adults was tested on a pilot study to affirm older adults’ abilities to do the task safely and without fatigue. The pilot study used paths similar to those used in Rand et al. (2015) Experiment 5, and compared older adults’ performance on a spatial learning task when they were navigating with their normal vision compared to when they were navigating with simulated degraded acuity and contrast sensitivity, all while guided. The results generally replicated the young adult findings, although the mean difference in pointing error between degraded vision (M = 30.6, SE = 3.37) and normal vision (M = 25.49, SE = 2.66) conditions was only marginally significant, likely because of the guidance provided in both conditions. After establishing that our methodological approach worked well with the pilot group, the current study focused on the difference in impairment between guided and unguided conditions, all with simulated degraded vision.

  2. Power analyses based on Barhorst-Cates et al. (2016), which showed a large within-subjects difference in SUDS anxiety reports comparing 60°–10° restricted field-of-view, indicated a sample size of seven participants necessary to detect a difference at α = .05, power = .80, Cohen's d = 1.29. The lower effect size (d = .61) calculated based on Rand et al. (2015) Experiment 2 indicated n = 23 necessary to detect a difference at α = .05, power = .80. Given the smaller effect size for guidance versus no guidance, it is possible that the current study would have detected a difference with a larger sample size, but the small observed mean difference (2.31) makes this unlikely.

  3. Age data was obtained from 41 of 46 participants from Rand et al. (2015).

  4. Regression analyses indicated that age did not predict the guided–unguided RT difference score (p = .486) or the guided–unguided average RT value (p = .869).

  5. Rand et al. (2015) Experiment 5 was run with larger n = 48 participants because of the intent to run a mediation analysis. Other work using this measure (Barhorst-Cates et al. 2016) has found an RT difference with n = 28.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01EY017835. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA

    Erica M. Barhorst-Cates, Kristina M. Rand & Sarah H. Creem-Regehr

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  1. Erica M. Barhorst-Cates
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  2. Kristina M. Rand
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  3. Sarah H. Creem-Regehr
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Correspondence to Erica M. Barhorst-Cates.

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Barhorst-Cates, E.M., Rand, K.M. & Creem-Regehr, S.H. Let me be your guide: physical guidance improves spatial learning for older adults with simulated low vision. Exp Brain Res 235, 3307–3317 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-5063-8

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