Navigational experience and the preservation of spatial abilities into old age among a tropical forager-horticulturalist population.

Navigational performance responds to navigational challenges, and both decline with age in Western populations as older people become less mobile. But mobility does not decline everywhere; Tsimané forager-horticulturalists in Bolivia remain highly mobile into their 70s and beyond, traveling on small footpaths to gardens and in pursuit of game and other resources. We therefore measured both natural mobility and navigational performance in Tsimané adults, to assess changes with age and to see whether greater mobility was related to better navigational performance across the lifespan. Daily mobility was measured by GPS tracking, regional mobility through interview, and navigational performance through pointing accuracy and perspective taking in environmental space. Although mental rotation and spatial perspective taking declined with age, mobility and pointing accuracy remained high from mid-life through old age. Greater regional mobility was associated with greater pointing accuracy, suggesting that spatial experience at environmental scales may help maintain navigational performance.