ABSTRACT
Development of these tools to assess active visuo-spatial processes makes it possible to disentangle the discrepancies that emerged from the studies of Salthouse and colleagues (Salthouse et al., 1991; Salthouse & Mitchell, 1989) of the structural vs. operational visuo-spatial capacity decay in the elderly. We addressed this issue from a passive vs. active processes perspective in the study mentioned in the preceding paragraph, using six different visuo-spatial tasks-three passive and three active-with a sample of three groups divided by age (Vecchi & Cornoldi, 1999). Young adults were compared with groups of young elderly and old elderly (60 to 70 and 70 to 80 years old, respectively). The mean performances of the three groups for the six tasks are reported in Table 5.1.
