Life span development study on spatial perspective-taking with response time as an index

空间视角转换是虚拟身体在三维空间中运动的一种形式。一个新的任务，测量这一独立于其他信息处理的虚拟身体运动的寿命发展进行了评估。参与者是儿童、大学生和老年人，他们被要求从正面开始接受8个点的视角，然后每隔45度接受一次。从参与者到要采取观点的点的距离与平均反应时间之间的关系的回归线的梯度不随年龄而不同。此外，反映虚拟身体动作不充分的反向错误率占总错误数的百分比按儿童>大学生>老年人的顺序较高。这些结果表明，虚拟身体的运动能力是保留在老年人。这一发现与传统观点相矛盾，传统观点认为空间观点采择能力在晚年会下降。这些研究结果的意义进行了讨论，参考成像和脑研究。

Spatial perspective-taking is a form of virtual-body movement in three-dimensional space. A new task for measuring this separately from other information-processing was devised and the life span development of virtual-body movement was evaluated. Participants were children, university students and elderly people who were asked to take-in the perspectives of eight points starting from their front, and subsequently at every 45 degrees. The gradient of the regression line of the relationship between the distance from the participants to the points for which perspectives were to be taken, and the average response time, did not differ with the age. Furthermore, the percentage of the reverse error ratio, which shows the inadequateness of virtual-body movement, to the total number of errors, was high in the order of children>university students>elderly. These results indicate that virtual-body movement ability is retained in the elderly. This finding contradicts the conventional wisdom that spatial perspective-taking ability declines in late life. The significance of these findings is discussed with reference to imaging and brain research.