ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Aging
Sec. Interventions in Aging
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fragi.2025.1587003
This article is part of the Research TopicCognitive Interactions and Movement adaptationsView all 4 articles
Spatial Navigation Skills in Older Adults With and Without Cognitive Impairment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Florida State University, Tallahassee, United States
- 2Center on Aging and Behavioral Research, Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, New York, New York, United States
- 3College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, United States
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Introduction: Navigation is a fundamental cognitive ability essential for daily functioning.However, navigation skills decline with age and are further impaired in individuals with cognitive impairment (CI). Understanding these deficits is critical for developing interventions to support affected populations.Methods: This study compared navigation abilities in older adults with CI (n = 20) to a previously collected community-dwelling sample of older adults (n = 380) using a consistent protocol. Both groups completed objective navigation tasks, subjective navigation assessments, and subjective memory evaluations.Results: Older adults with CI exhibited significantly lower performance on objective navigation tasks and subjective memory assessments compared to the community sample. Among the three subjective navigation measures, only one demonstrated a significant difference between the groups. Additionally, subjective navigation measures were not reliably predicted by subjective memory or objective navigation performance.Discussion: These findings highlight a unique and complex relationship between navigation, aging, and cognitive impairment. The results underscore the need for further research to explore the effects of different types of CI on navigation and identify strategies to mitigate these deficits.This study provides valuable insights into navigation impairments associated with cognitive decline in aging populations, paving the way for targeted interventions to preserve navigation skills in affected individuals.
Keywords: spatial navigation, wayfinding, Mild Cognitive Impairment, Traumatic Brain Injury, post-stroke
Received: 03 Mar 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kossowska-Kuhn, Prevratil, Charness, Boot, Czaja and Rogers. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dorota Kossowska-Kuhn, Florida State University, Tallahassee, United States
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