Visuo-spatial abilities have an important role in environment learning. The aim of the present study was to explore whether these abilities relate to spatial recall after learning an environment from a map or a video, and irrespective of the learner's age (from youth to old age). The study involved 431 participants from 25 to 84 years old, who were assessed for their visuo-spatial working memory, object-based mental rotation, and perspective-taking abilities. Then, they learned environments from a map and a video, and performed pointing, map drawing, and route repetition tasks after learning from each type of input. The resulting path models showed that age related to visuo-spatial abilities and (in some cases) to spatial accuracy, too. After accounting for age, visuo-spatial abilities also related to spatial recall performance, whatever the type of learning input, especially in pointing tasks and, to a lesser degree, in map drawing and route repetition tasks. Overall, the relationship between individual visuo-spatial abilities and environment learning relates to the learning input and the type of task used to assess recall. This relationship was found in a large and diverse sample of participants ranging from youth to old age.

中文翻译：

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视觉空间功能在成人学习期间通过地图和导航进行环境学习中的作用。

视觉空间能力在环境学习中具有重要作用。本研究的目的是探索这些能力是否与从地图或视频中学习环境之后的空间记忆有关，并且与学习者的年龄（从青年到老年）无关。这项研究涉及431位年龄在25至84岁之间的参与者，他们的视觉空间工作记忆，基于对象的心理旋转和采取观点的能力得到了评估。然后，他们从地图和视频中学习环境，并在从每种输入类型中学习后执行指向，地图绘制和路线重复任务。最终的路径模型表明，年龄与视觉空间能力有关，并且（在某些情况下）与空间准确性有关。在考虑了年龄之后，视觉空间能力也与空间召回表现有关，不论学习输入的类型如何，尤其是在指向任务中，以及在较小程度上，在地图绘制和路线重复任务中。总体而言，个人视觉空间能力与环境学习之间的关系与学习投入和用于评估回忆的任务类型有关。在从青年到老年的大量参与者样本中发现了这种关系。