Fig. 2: Path integration performance across both age groups.

a Absolute path integration errors over four stopping points for young and older adults. Average errors per stopping point are shown for each participant separately by blue (young adults) and orange (older adults) dots, connected with lines between stopping points. b Each participant’s location estimate (y-axis) versus their true location (x-axis) at each of the four stopping points (columns), separately for x-coordinates (top row) and y-coordinates (bottom row). Plots show data from all participants and all paths. The diagonal (dashed line) indicates perfect response (estimated location = true location). All correlation coefficients are statistically significant (all p < 0.00001). Units are meters. c Absolute path integration errors of young and older adults versus errors with shuffled responses. It is evident that the mean absolute path integration error of both groups (solid lines) is much lower than the errors obtained from shuffling each participant’s responses across trials. Error bars indicate group mean ± SEM.