MALES AND FEMALES USE DIFFERENT DISTAL CUES IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT NAVIGATION TASK

The study of navigational ability in humans is often limited by the re stricted availability and inconvenience of using large novel environme nts. In the present study we use a computer-generated virtual environm ent to study sex differences in human spatial navigation. Adult male a nd female participants navigated through a virtual water maze where bo th landmarks and room geometry were available as distal cues. Manipula tion of environmental characteristics revealed that females rely predo minantly on landmark information, while males more readily use both la ndmark and geometric information. We discuss these results as a possib le link between recent human research reporting hippocampal activation in spatial tasks and animal work showing sex differences in both spat ial ability and hippocampal development. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V .