The effects of healthy aging on mental imagery as revealed by egocentric and allocentric mental spatial transformations

Previous studies suggest that mental rotation can be accomplished by using different mental spatial transformations. When adopting the allocentric transformation, individuals imagine the stimulus rotation referring to its intrinsic coordinate frame, while when adopting the egocentric transformation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Acta psychologica Vol. 143; no. 1; pp. 146 - 156
Main Authors:	De Simone, Luca, Tomasino, Barbara, Marusic, Nela, Eleopra, Roberto, Rumiati, Raffaella Ida
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Kidlington Elsevier B.V 01-05-2013 Elsevier
Subjects:	Adult Adult. Elderly Aged Aging Aging - physiology Attention Biological and medical sciences Developmental psychology Feedback, Sensory Female Functional Laterality - physiology Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Humans Imagery Imagination - physiology Laterality Linear Models Male Motor Orientation Photic Stimulation Posture Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology Psychomotor Performance - physiology Reaction Time - physiology Rotation Sensory Thinking - physiology Motor Aging 2340 Cognitive Processes Imagery Laterality Sensory 2300 Human Experimental Psychology Human Mental imagery Senescence Hemispheric specialization Healthy subject Central nervous system Allocentric representation Cognition Experimental study Encephalon Young adult Egocentric representation Elderly Spatial representation
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Summary:	Previous studies suggest that mental rotation can be accomplished by using different mental spatial transformations. When adopting the allocentric transformation, individuals imagine the stimulus rotation referring to its intrinsic coordinate frame, while when adopting the egocentric transformation they rely on multisensory and sensory-motor mechanisms. However, how these mental transformations evolve during healthy aging has received little attention. Here we investigated how visual, multisensory, and sensory-motor components of mental imagery change with normal aging. Fifteen elderly and 15 young participants were asked to perform two different laterality tasks within either an allocentric or an egocentric frame of reference. Participants had to judge either the handedness of a visual hand (egocentric task) or the location of a marker placed on the left or right side of the same visual hand (allocentric task). Both left and right hands were presented at various angular departures to the left, the right, or to the center of the screen. When performing the egocentric task, elderly participants were less accurate and slower for biomechanically awkward hand postures (i.e., lateral hand orientations). Their performance also decreased when stimuli were presented laterally. The findings revealed that healthy aging is associated with a specific degradation of sensory-motor mechanisms necessary to accomplish complex effector-centered mental transformations. Moreover, failure to find a difference in judging left or right hand laterality suggests that aging does not necessarily impair non-dominant hand sensory-motor programs. •This study examined the impact of healthy aging on mental imagery.•Visual, multisensory, and sensory-motor components of mental imagery were tested.•Elderly adults are less efficient in applying complex sensory-motor transformations.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0001-6918 1873-6297
DOI:	10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.02.014