Understanding the return journey: Determinants of route retracing in younger and older adults.

Route retracing (i.e., returning to your start location) is critical for successful navigation in everyday life. While age-related impairment in traversing a route from a start location to target destination has been well-established, age differences in the ability to reverse a previously learned path has been less examined. Previous work found that studying a map facilitates better route retracing for older adults than studying a route from an egocentric perspective during initial learning. However, the mechanism for this benefit is unclear. This study examined whether facilitating allocentric representation, egocentric perspective taking, or temporal sequencing would benefit route retracing performance in younger (n = 69; aged 18–36) and older (n = 70; aged 61–85) adults. In addition, the role of individual differences in allocentric representation development, egocentric perspective taking, temporal sequencing, procedural learning, as well as hippocampal and caudate volume in route performance was examined. Older adults benefited from developing an allocentric representation of the environment and simultaneous exposure to landmark temporal order when reversing a route but did not show a benefit from minimizing demands on egocentric perspective taking. Both cognitive map formation and egocentric perspective taking tasks were each more strongly associated with route retracing than route repetition across age groups. Results suggest that older adults may benefit from specific strategies to develop and retain a flexible environmental representation, which would allow for successful route retracing.