Retrieving spatial information is a crucial everyday ability that is affected by age‐related changes. Previous research has shown that this change is mediated by familiarity with an environment. The present research uses a series of landmark location tasks to extend and deepen our understanding of the role of aging in spatial mental representations of more or less familiar environments, also disentangling the contribution of coordinate and categorical spatial relations. The study tested the following hypotheses: (1) younger adults only have an advantage over the elderly in less familiar environments; (2) the advantage for categorical over coordinate spatial relations is mainly found for less familiar environments; and finally; (3) interactions between age, familiarity, and spatial relations might reveal that the effects of age and familiarity take different trajectories for coordinate and categorical spatial relations. Results confirmed that: (1) young people outperform the elderly only in less familiar environments; (2) there is a reduction in the difference between coordinate and categorical accuracy with increasing familiarity with the environment; while (3) the interaction between age and level of familiarity did not significantly differentiate coordinate from categorical spatial relations. In conclusion, the present study provides new evidence for the role of familiarity with geographical areas and its impact on the representation of categorical and coordinate relations, with practical implications for the assessment of topographical disorientation in aging.

中文翻译：

---

年龄和对环境的熟悉程度对分类和协调空间关系表示的影响

检索空间信息是一项至关重要的日常能力，受年龄相关变化的影响。先前的研究表明，这种变化是由对环境的熟悉所介导的。本研究使用一系列具有里程碑意义的定位任务来扩展和加深我们对衰老在或多或少熟悉的环境的空间心理表征中的作用的理解，也弄清了坐标和分类空间关系的贡献。该研究检验了以下假设：（1）在不那么熟悉的环境中，年轻人仅比老年人具有优势；（2）相对于坐标空间关系而言，分类的优势主要是在不太熟悉的环境中发现的；最后 （3）年龄，熟悉程度，空间关系可能揭示年龄和熟悉程度对协调和分类的空间关系采取不同的轨迹。结果证实：（1）年轻人仅在不那么熟悉的环境下胜过老年人；（2）随着对环境的熟悉程度的提高，坐标和分类精度之间的差异减小了；（3）年龄和熟悉程度之间的交互作用并未将坐标与分类空间关系区分开。总而言之，本研究为熟悉地理区域的作用及其对分类和坐标关系表示的影响提供了新的证据，并对老化中地形迷失方向的评估具有实际意义。