Age differences in spatial navigation stem from a preference for familiar routes rather than impaired landmark-dependent strategies

A leading hypothesis in the field of aging and navigation is that older adults are selectively impaired on tasks that require allocentric (landmark-based) strategies to navigate, resulting in a shift toward more egocentric (self-based) strategies. However, most evidence in humans comes from studies that restrict body-based sensorimotor cues that are essential to both egocentric and allocentric navigation. In the present study, young and older adults navigated a virtual environment in each of two conditions: a stationary desktop condition that relied on visual input and an immersive condition that enabled unrestricted ambulation and sensorimotor feedback during navigation. Both age groups performed worse when initially learning locations from novel compared with familiar locations-often considered a hallmark of allocentric navigation. The cost of switching from familiar to novel start locations was equal between age groups, pointing to a null effect of age on allocentric strategies. Older adults also employed distal landmarks to a comparable extent to young adults, suggesting that landmark-dependent strategies did not differ by age. However, older adults were more likely to replicate previously taken paths, potentially indicative of a preference for egocentric strategies. The path replication effect was significantly attenuated in the immersive condition, particularly in the presence of geometric boundary cues that could be used to infer distance. Age differences in spatial navigation may therefore be driven in part by a selective bias for navigating familiar routes, although these differences were lessened in the presence of multimodal visual and sensorimotor cues. The present study highlights that navigation is a complex cognitive construct that draws on multiple parallel systems and strategies that cannot be easily explained by a simple allocentric-egocentric dichotomy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).