Individual movement patterns in real‐world navigation as a digital marker of cognitive health in the elderly

During normal aging and, particularly, during pathological aging, people often show problems in spatial navigation (SN), rendering it a promising marker of cognitive health in the elderly. However, SN is rarely investigated in people experiencing subjective cognitive decline (SCD), which is considered a very early stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Impaired performance of SCD patients was observed in a computerized navigation task. However, it remains unclear, how this translates to their everyday navigation behavior. Capitalizing on recent advancements in digital technologies, we measured the performance of healthy younger (HYA), healthy older adults (HOA), and SCD patients, when they solve a smartphone‐based navigation task in the real‐world.