Gender Differences in Wayfinding: What They Tell Us About the Nature of Spatial Abilities

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol A. Lawton
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Spatial Abilities

Gender differences in dynamic spatial abilities

1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis P. Saccuzzo ◽  
A.Scott Craig ◽  
Nancy E. Johnson ◽  
Gerald E. Larson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Spatial Abilities

scholarly journals Travel planning in men and women. Who is better?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessia Bocchi ◽  
Massimiliano Palmiero ◽  
Laura Piccardi
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Spatial Abilities ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Travel Planning ◽  
Environmental Features ◽  
Planning Ability ◽  
Overall Performance ◽  
The Times ◽  
Lost Object

AbstractGender differences are often reported in spatial abilities, most of the times favouring men. Even during wayfinding, which requires planning and decision-making, such as choosing roads to take or shortcuts, men are in general better and faster than women. Although different interpretations have been proposed to explain men’s advantage in navigation, no study has explored the possibility that it could be due to men’s better travel planning ability. This latter has been recently identified as a distinct kind of planning that allows implementing an efficient navigational strategy in accordance with the environmental features. Therefore, the present study was aimed at investigating gender differences in travel planning ability. We compared men and women in performing the Key Search Task that requires to implement a strategy to search for a lost object in a wide imagined space. Results showed that men outperform women in both the overall performance and in some specific indexes of the total score. Men had a better travel planning ability with respect to women, outperforming women in configuring the planned strategy and choosing the best point to enter the imagined field. Therefore, men seem to plan the best navigational strategy and appear more cognitively flexible than women in adapting the strategy at the environmental features. The two genders did not differ in the time spent to solve the task. This finding suggests that differences in travel planning skills can contribute in explaining gender differences in wayfinding and spatial orientation.

scholarly journals GENDER DIFFERENCES IN SPATIAL ABILITIES INFLUENCED BY GENDER STEREOTYPE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Esipenko ◽  
Olga Polyakova ◽  
Kristina Beloplotova ◽  
Ksenia Sharafieva
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Stereotype ◽  
Spatial Abilities

Spatial Perception and Mental Rotation Produce Gender Differences in Cerebral Hemovelocity

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.D. Walter ◽  
A. E. Roberts ◽  
S. Brownlow
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Transcranial Doppler ◽  
Doppler Sonography ◽  
Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity ◽  
Spatial Perception ◽  
Transcranial Doppler Sonography ◽  
Spatial Abilities ◽  
Complex Scene ◽  
Geometric Patterns

Abstract We sought to determine if gender differences in cerebral blood flow velocity emerge while persons performed cognitive tasks known to favor men, e.g., tests of spatial abilities. Bilateral measures were obtained simultaneously from the middle cerebral artery (VMCA) by transcranial Doppler sonography while men and women college students performed 31-s thinking tasks. Tests of spatial ability included (1) three spatial visualizing tasks (finding words among sets of letters, locating pictures hidden within a complex scene, and finding embedded geometric patterns), and (2) a mental rotation task. Two nonspatial visualizing control tasks were looking at (1) a list of words and (2) a set of pictures. Women had significantly faster global VMCAs than men during all tasks except looking at pictures. Two tasks (looking at pictures, mental rotation) produced hemispheric asymmetry (right > left) in women only. Gender differences in the number of correct responses occurred for finding words (women > men) and mental rotation (paradoxically, men > women) but not the other tests of spatial abilities. Our study shows that transcranial Doppler sonography provides noninvasive, real-time physiological indices of gender differences in spatial abilities.

scholarly journals Nurture affects gender differences in spatial abilities

2011 ◽  
Vol 108 (36) ◽  
pp. 14786-14788 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Hoffman ◽  
U. Gneezy ◽  
J. A. List
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Spatial Abilities
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