Abstract:

The relationship between age and route knowledge acquisition is a significant issue in space and cognitive aging area. Old people demonstrate various performances of cognitive aging when confronting different path learning environments. The previous researches focused on the difference of age-related route knowledge acquisition ability, which mainly supported the theory of cognitive aging decline. However, recent studies have revealed that the aged might remain spatial cognitive compensation ability. Therefore, based on the review and reflection of the former literature, this review integrates the manifestation and mechanism of cognitive aging of route knowledge acquisition, in order to explore the underlying internal factors and external effective measures to alleviate spatial cognitive aging.

Key words: cognitive aging, route retrace, path integration, mechanism of decline, route knowledge