MEN AND WOMEN DO NOT DIFFER IN PERFOMANCE ON A NOVEL LANDMARK NAVIGATION TASK

Abstract

Sex differences in spatial learning and memory tasks have been investigated. There have been some studies that have shown a clear and consistent male advantage on these tasks, while other studies have reported no sex differences. Males tend to perform better than females when using Euclidean (geometric) directions, and females perform better than males when using landmark directions. In real-world navigation, both Euclidean and landmark cues are available. Therefore, men and women may navigate equally in the real-world, but there may be a male advantage on spatial tasks in the laboratory. Therefore, the present study will use video clips of real-world locations in order examine sex difference in spatial navigation. In this a novel landmark navigation task. The landmark navigation task required subjects to watch 10 videos of different locations. The 10 second video showed participants a first person view of a location. The video scanned to the left and right of the camera person's location. After the video was over, participants were shown a still image from the video and they had to determine if a cue or landmark was to the left of right of that location. Results showed that both men and women performed similarly on this task, showing no significant sex differences.