SPATIAL ABILITY, NAVIGATION STRATEGY, AND GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE AMONG MEN AND WOMEN

In a study of sex differences in navigation strategy and geographic kn owledge, 90 men and 104 women completed cognitive spatial tests, gave directions from local maps, and identified places on a world map, On t he spatial tests, men were better than women in mental rotation skill, but men and women were similar in object location memory, In giving d irections, men were more abstract and Euclidian, using miles and north -south-east-west terms, whereas women were more concrete and personal, using landmarks and left-right terms. Older subjects of both sexes ga ve more abstract Euclidian directions than younger subjects did, On th e world map, men identified more places than women did. The data fit a causal model in which sex predicts world map knowledge and the use of Euclidian directions, both directly and indirectly through a sex diff erence in spatial skills. The age effect, which was independent of sex , supports a developmental view of spatial cognition. (C) 1998 Elsevie r Science Inc.