Verbal description, verbal description with imagery instruction, videotape observation, and map study were compared as different means for providing elderly adults with information needed for a series of spatial tasks in a large-scale environment. Verbal description and map study led to greater efficiency on a route execution task, but the four means did not lead to differences on scene recognition, route planning, or map placement tasks. A simple classification of behaviors revealed that walking while scanning and standing while scanning were most common during route execution. Standing without scanning during route execution was correlated with poor performance in that task. Psychometric measures of spatial abilities, imagery abilities, and internal-external locus of control did not correlate highly with performance measures from the environmental tasks.
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