Age differences in path learning: The role of interference in updating spatial information

• Older adults showed worse performance compared with young and adults.
• Proactive interference seems to hinder the updating of spatial information.
• Constantly updating spatial information entails a great effort at all ages.

Spatial orientation is an essential ability, which has shown to decline with aging. Although several researches have focused on the different orientation behaviors and perspectives, few of them have examined the acquisition of multiple paths at the same time. The current study was designed with the intention of investigating age differences in multiple view learning, as well as understanding the difficulty in updating spatial information. Twenty young people, 20 adults and 20 older adults learnt three paths which started and ended from different points of view in the same virtual environment. Results had shown worse performance of the older adults, although all age groups worsened in the last path. These results showed a severe impact on navigation in aging, and were discussed within aging and spatial cognition domain.