Sex differences in directional cue use in a virtual landscape.

How males and females differ in their use of cues for spatial navigation is an important question. Although women and men appear to respond differently to close and distant objects, object features and the geometry of spaces, the common denominator of these sex-specific cue preferences is unknown. By constructing virtual landscapes from either directional (graded, gradient) or positional (pinpoint) cues, the authors tested the hypothesis that sex differences arise from preferences for cues that provide primarily direction or position, as predicted by the parallel map model of the cognitive map. Women and men learned a target location in the presence of either one or the other class of cues. Men were more accurate in estimating the target location overall, but the navigation accuracy difference between men and women was greater in the presence of directional cues. Our findings provide support for the parallel map model and suggest that the previously reported male advantage in the presence of distant objects and geometric cues derives from their function as directional cues.

[1]  Diane F. Halpern,et al.  The Smarter Sex: A Critical Review of Sex Differences in Intelligence , 2000 .

[2]  G. Bower,et al.  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING AND M·OTIVATION , 2001 .

[3]  Hanspeter A Mallot,et al.  Geographical Slant Facilitates Navigation and Orientation in Virtual Environments , 2004, Perception.

[4]  S. Vandenberg,et al.  Mental Rotations, a Group Test of Three-Dimensional Spatial Visualization , 1978, Perceptual and motor skills.

[5]  E. Maguire,et al.  The Well-Worn Route and the Path Less Traveled Distinct Neural Bases of Route Following and Wayfinding in Humans , 2003, Neuron.

[6]  R. Astur,et al.  Sex differences and correlations in a virtual Morris water task, a virtual radial arm maze, and mental rotation , 2004, Behavioural Brain Research.

[7]  R. W. Fitzgerald.  Sex Differences in Spatial Ability: An Evolutionary Hypothesis and Test , 1986, The American Naturalist.

[8]  Bruno Poucet,et al.  Entorhinal cortex lesions impair the use of distal but not proximal landmarks during place navigation in the rat , 2004, Behavioural Brain Research.

[9]  R. Morris,et al.  Place navigation impaired in rats with hippocampal lesions , 1982, Nature.

[10]  S. Healy,et al.  Differences in cue use and spatial memory in men and women , 2006, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[11]  D. Halpern,et al.  Sex differences in intelligence. Implications for education. , 1997, The American psychologist.

[12]  Lucia F. Jacobs,et al.  Sex and species differences in spatial memory in food-storing kangaroo rats , 2007, Animal Behaviour.

[13]  Debbie M Kelly,et al.  Reorienting in images of a three-dimensional environment. , 2005, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[14]  C. Büchel,et al.  Dissociable Retrosplenial and Hippocampal Contributions to Successful Formation of Survey Representations , 2005, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[15]  D. Saucier,et al.  Are sex differences in navigation caused by sexually dimorphic strategies or by differences in the ability to use the strategies? , 2002, Behavioral neuroscience.

[16]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Knowing where and getting there: a human navigation network. , 1998, Science.

[17]  J. M. Dabbs,et al.  Spatial Ability, Navigation Strategy, and Geographic Knowledge Among Men and Women , 1998 .

[18]  W H Meck,et al.  Organizational effects of early gonadal secretions on sexual differentiation in spatial memory. , 1990, Behavioral neuroscience.

[19]  D. Kimura,et al.  Sex differences in route-learning , 1993 .

[20]  Michael R. Hunsaker,et al.  Dissociating the role of the parietal cortex and dorsal hippocampus for spatial information processing. , 2005, Behavioral neuroscience.

[21]  K. I. Gabriel,et al.  Sex differences in cue perception in a visual scene: investigation of cue type. , 2007, Behavioral neuroscience.

[22]  Michael R. Hunsaker,et al.  The interactions and dissociations of the dorsal hippocampus subregions: how the dentate gyrus, CA3, and CA1 process spatial information. , 2008, Behavioral neuroscience.

[23]  W. Overman,et al.  Sex-sensitive tasks in men and women: a search for performance fluctuations across the menstrual cycle. , 1998, Behavioral neuroscience.

[24]  J. Aggleton,et al.  Qualitatively Different Hippocampal Subfield Engagement Emerges with Mastery of a Spatial Memory Task by Rats , 2008, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[25]  K. Jeffery,et al.  A role for terrain slope in orienting hippocampal place fields , 2006, Experimental Brain Research.

[26]  C. Lawton.  Gender differences in way-finding strategies: Relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety , 1994 .

[27]  E. Coluccia,et al.  Gender differences in spatial orientation: A review , 2004 .

[28]  Bruno Poucet,et al.  Functional interaction between the associative parietal cortex and hippocampal place cell firing in the rat , 2005, The European journal of neuroscience.

[29]  L. Jacobs,et al.  Sexual selection and the brain. , 1996, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[30]  Jean Choi,et al.  Sex-Specific Relationships Between Route-Learning Strategies and Abilities in a Large-Scale Environment , 2006 .

[31]  Lucia F Jacobs,et al.  Unpacking the cognitive map: the parallel map theory of hippocampal function. , 2003, Psychological review.

[32]  Albert Postma,et al.  Sex Differences in Object Location Memory , 1998, Brain and Cognition.

[33]  J. Gabrieli,et al.  Neural Correlates of Encoding Space from Route and Survey Perspectives , 2002, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[34]  Denise Manahan-Vaughan,et al.  The hippocampal CA1 region and dentate gyrus differentiate between environmental and spatial feature encoding through long-term depression. , 2008, Cerebral cortex.

[35]  C M Langley,et al.  Spatial memory in the desert kangaroo rat (Dipodomys deserti). , 1994, Journal of comparative psychology.

[36]  S. Huettel,et al.  Males and females use different distal cues in a virtual environment navigation task. , 1998, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[37]  B. Laeng,et al.  A Redrawn Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotations Test - Different Versions and Factors That Affect Performance , 1995, Brain and Cognition.

[38]  D. Saucier,et al.  Sex differences in object location memory and spatial navigation in Long-Evans rats , 2007, Animal Cognition.

[39]  R. Sutherland,et al.  A characterization of performance by men and women in a virtual Morris water task: A large and reliable sex difference , 1998, Behavioural Brain Research.

[40]  S. Moffat,et al.  Navigation in a “Virtual” Maze: Sex Differences and Correlation With Psychometric Measures of Spatial Ability in Humans , 1998 .

[41]  Neil Burgess,et al.  Distinct error-correcting and incidental learning of location relative to landmarks and boundaries , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[42]  Elizabeth Hampson,et al.  Estrogen-related variations in human spatial and articulatory-motor skills , 1990, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[43]  M. Petrides,et al.  Cognitive Strategies Dependent on the Hippocampus and Caudate Nucleus in Human Navigation: Variability and Change with Practice , 2003, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[44]  Christian F. Doeller,et al.  Parallel striatal and hippocampal systems for landmarks and boundaries in spatial memory , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[45]  Augusto Gnisci,et al.  Gender differences in object location memory in a real three-dimensional environment , 2005, Brain and Cognition.

[46]  W. Meck,et al.  The organizational effects of gonadal steroids on sexually dimorphic spatial ability , 1991, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[47]  E. Spelke.  Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science?: a critical review. , 2005, The American psychologist.

[48]  B. Tversky.  Spatial mental models , 1991 .