The role of personality in route learning in young and older adults

This study newly explored the relationship between personality (also considering its facets) and an environmental ability as crucial to day-to-day living, and sensitive to age-related decline, as route learning, in young and older adults. Thirty-five young adults (Mage = 24.06, SD = 3.29) and 35 old...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality and individual differences 2020-11, Vol.166, p.110187, Article 110187
Main Authors: Carbone, Elena, Meneghetti, Chiara, Borella, Erika
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age differences
Age-related differences
Aging
Five factor model
Landmarks
Learning
Manipulation
Older people
Openness
Perseveration
Personality
Personality facets
Route learning
Spatial learning skills
Task performance
Young adults
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study newly explored the relationship between personality (also considering its facets) and an environmental ability as crucial to day-to-day living, and sensitive to age-related decline, as route learning, in young and older adults. Thirty-five young adults (Mage = 24.06, SD = 3.29) and 35 older adults (Mage = 68.34, SD = 3.26) completed the Big Five questionnaire, learned a new route from a video and were then asked to recall the order and the location of the landmarks encountered along the path (i.e., the landmark ordering and the landmark locating tasks). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that age negatively predicted performance in both landmark ordering and landmark locating tasks. For the landmark locating task, an additional significant part of the variance was also explained by some personality facets: Perseverance, Emotion Control and Openness to Experience. As well as confirming an age-related decline in route learning ability, our findings also highlight the protective effect of certain personality facets on route learning performance in a task that demands a major manipulation of previously-acquired environmental information.
ISSN:0191-8869
1873-3549
DOI:10.1016/j.paid.2020.110187