ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the brief review of work concerned specifically with ageing-related changes in wayfinding and orientation behaviour, and an evaluative commentary on the state of knowledge. Studies of actual wayfinding and orientation behaviour in older adults have been extremely rare. Critical to navigating in general is the ability to maintain in memory some general sense of the spatial and temporal relations between points along a route or the relationship of adjacent locations. The information being obtained in animal laboratories, in rehabilitation clinics with stroke and head-injured individuals, and in experimental psychology laboratories can provide the perceptive individual with valuable information in order to ask better questions. Analyses indicated that while excellent estimators were not influenced by the type of training group to which they were assigned, the performance of the medium and poor estimators were most markedly improved by viewing a map prior to the presentation of the walk.
