THE INFLUENCE OF AGE, GENDER, AND CUES ON COMPUTER-SIMULATED TOPOGRAPHIC MEMORY

Topographic memory failure is reported to be a common occurrence among elderly patients being evaluated for dementia. The deficit is at least partly due to an inability to either encode or effectively use landmarks for orientation. A computer simulated task was created to measure experimentally the relative influence of landmark and memory cues, as well as the demographic variables of age and gender, on topographic memory ability. We used several versions of the task, including presence or absence of map symbols and tracing routes with a moving dot versus a dotted line. There were significant age effects on the task, but the actual magnitude of decline was modest. Gender effects were also significant, but effect size was so small it made this difference trivial. The landmark cuing afforded by map symbols did not affect performance. Increased time of exposure to the path resulted in a small improvement. Modest associations were found between topographic memory task performance and other memory measures.