Gaze behaviour during locomotion must balance sampling relevant information and the need for a safe and stable gait. Aging might affect this balance due to an increased risk of falling as well as decreased uptake of sensory information. Here we investigated how violations of expectations influence gaze behaviour in younger and older adults.
In this study, participants (YA: N = 22, M = 24.3 years; OA: N = 12, M = 67.7 years) moved through a virtual reality (VR) reconstruction of a real-world university hallway wearing a VR headset. Participants were instructed to locomote without additional task. We placed semantically congruent (e.g., an office printer) and incongruent target objects (e.g., a bass) in the hallway to investigate how gaze behaviour during locomotion is influenced by expected or unexpected objects. After data collection, the participants were asked to freely recall as many of the objects as possible.
Gaze behaviour was subject to a significant interaction effect between the factors age group and object congruency. Older adults showed lower dwell times on congruent objects than younger adults. Dwell times on incongruent objects were boosted in both age groups, but to a larger extent in older adults. Free recall for incongruent objects was significantly better than for congruent objects in both age groups. However, this benefit was more pronounced in older adults.
Our findings show that surprising information attracts attention - particularly in older adults. In real-world scenarios such a benefit in information processing might come at the cost of reduced gait safety.