Learning a Map of Environment: The Role of Visuo-Spatial Abilities in Young and Older Adults CHIARA MENEGHETTI * , FELICIA FIORE, ERIKA BORELLA and ROSSANA DE BENI Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy Summary: The present study examines age-related differences between young and older adults in spatial mental representation derived from learning a realistic city map. A sample of 30 young (20–30-years) and 30 older (60–72 years) adults learned a simplified map of a city; afterwards participants performed map-drawing and pointing-aligned and counter-aligned tasks. Tasks measuring visuo-spatial abilities were also administered to explore their relationship with map learning. Results showed an age- related impairment in older adults in both map tasks, as well as in visuo-spatial ones. Furthermore, performance on counter- aligned pointing was poorer than on aligned pointing in young and older adults, and its relationship with visuo-spatial abilities changed as a function of age group: The performance of counter-aligned pointing in older adults was related to all visuo-spatial abilities, and in young adults with perspective-taking measures only. Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION Environment knowledge can be acquired directly through navigation or indirectly through the use of symbolic tools such as navigation systems or maps. The latter are frequently used in our everyday life to orient ourselves in a new town without getting lost. City maps are characterized by a depiction of the whole area showing streets and main landmark locations. From map learning, individuals con- struct a cognitive map (Tolman, 1948), that is, a mental representation of an environment with its landmarks and routes. According to Siegel and White (1975) the ability to represent the environment from a map-like view—the survey perspective—is the most refined competence after environment has been represented on route (i.e. from person point of view) and landmark knowledge. Thus, it is of great interest to analyse to what extent environment mental representation acquired from a survey perspective (i.e. map) can vary as a function of age when young and older adults are considered. Different studies have shown that the use of maps is an efficient way to acquire quickly and accurately knowledge of an environment, as it facilitates configurational under- standing of the represented space (e.g. Richardson, Montello, & Hegarty, 1999; Thorndyke & Hayes-Roth, 1982). Although such a pattern of results has been shown for young adults, older ones seem to encounter difficulty using a map. Wilkniss, Jones, Korol, Gold, and Manning (1997), for instance, found that after map learning of a route older adults were more unable than their younger counterparts to draw a map and navigate in a real path. Moreover, unlike young adults, older ones are not advantaged in environment learning when map presentation is used as an aid to navigation (e.g. Lipman & Caplan, 1992; Sjolinder, Hook, Nilsson, & Andersson, 2005). This evidence is, however, derived by the use of several spatial measures for testing map learning such as map drawing, in which the path or the layout studied was reproduced as a map on a sheet of paper. Another measure frequently used to test spatial mental representation features after map learning is the pointing task (e.g. Levine, Marchon, & Hanley, 1984; Pazzaglia & De Beni, 2006; Pazzaglia & Taylor, 2007; Richardson et al., 1999; Thorndyke & Hayes-Roth, 1982), which requires participants to imagine being at one position on a map (i.e., standing at a landmark and facing another). Classical findings, with young adults, showed a lesser degree of error when participants were required to indicate a direction in which the observer view was aligned with map orientation rather than counter-aligned. This orientation-dependency is called the ‘alignment effect’ (e.g. Evans & Pezdek, 1980; Levine et al., 1984; Presson, DeLange, & Hazelrigg, 1989). The difficulty in assuming counter-aligned positions was also found in aging studies that showed a poorer performance of older adults — in comparison with the young — in laboratory perspective-taking tasks (e.g. Herman & Coyne, 1980; Inagaki, Meguro, Shimada, Ishizaki, Okuzumi, & Yamadori, 2002). Little is known, however, about perspective-taking ability in older adults when a map reproducing a realistic environment is learned. This question was initially approached by Aubrey, Li, and Dobbs (1994), who asked groups of young and older adults to study maps — aligned or counter-aligned with the participants’ orientation—of a university campus. Results showed that older adults made more errors and were slower than their younger counterparts at pointing out the direction of buildings. Furthermore, the interaction age  alignment showed that for aligned maps young and older participants had a similar performance, whereas for counter-aligned maps older participants per- formed less well than the younger ones. This result suggests that after studying a real open-environment map older adults are particularly subject to the alignment effect. Apart from the cited work, however, no research has been dedicated to age-related differences in map learning. With respect to cognitive abilities involved in environment learning, visuo-spatial abilities have been shown to have a crucial role in explaining the accuracy of spatial mental representation formed (e.g. Allen, Kirasic, Dobson, Long, & Beck, 1996; Fields & Shelton, 2006; Hegarty, Montello, Richardson, Ishikawa, & Lovelace, Applied Cognitive Psychology , Appl. Cognit. Psychol. (2011) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1788 *Correspondence to: Chiara Meneghetti, Department of General Psychol- ogy, University of Padua, Italy. E-mail: chiara.meneghetti@unipd.it Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.