Continuous measurement of object location memory is sensitive to effects of age and mild cognitive impairment and related to medial temporal lobe volume.

•Evaluated age and mild cognitive impairment effects using ecologically relevant object location (OL) task.•Performance evaluated using both continuous and dichotomous measures of accuracy.•Greater decline in OL memory with mild cognitive impairment than with “healthy” aging.•Performance, especially continuous measure, reflected medial temporal integrity.•Novel OL memory task may be sensitive to early structural compromise.