GENDER DIFFERENCES IN WAY-FINDING STRATEGIES - RELATIONSHIP TO SPATIAL ABILITY AND SPATIAL ANXIETY

Differences between women and men in the self-reported use of two diff erent way-finding strategies were examined in a sample of primarily wh ite middle to lower middle class college undergraduates. Women were mo re likely to report using a route strategy (attending to instructions on how to get from place to place), whereas men were more likely to re port using an orientation strategy (maintaining a sense of their own p osition in relation to environmental reference points). Women also rep orted higher levels of spatial anxiety, or anxiety about environmental navigation, than did men. The orientation strategy was found to be po sitively correlated with spatial perception ability and negatively cor related with spatial anxiety.