Besides navigation accuracy: Gender differences in strategy selection and level of spatial confidence

Picucci, Luciana; Caffò, Alessandro O.; Bosco, Andrea

doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2011.01.005

Cited by 62 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Our results are in line with studies which show that women are less confident in their ability to solve spatial environmental tasks, for example mental rotation tasks (e.g. Picucci et al 2011). In our experiment, women perceived themselves as having less SOD, TK and SA, even if, in reality, they have the same capability to solve such tasks.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

I believe I’m good at orienting myself… But is that true?

Nori

Piccardi

2015

Cogn Process

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The present study aimed to analyse beliefs that men and women have with respect to their sense of direction (SOD) and whether they correlate with spatial environmental task performance. Eighty-four students filled in the short version of the Familiarity and Spatial Cognitive Style Scale to evaluate beliefs on their SOD, knowledge of the city (TK), spatial ability (SA) and wayfinding (WA) and performed three spatial environmental tasks. Results showed that gender did not predict the performance on the spatial environmental tasks, whereas it can be predicted by participants' beliefs related to their SOD and TK. The findings point out the need to identify specific training aimed at improving women's metacognitive skills in order to delete or reduce gender differences in SA.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

I believe I’m good at orienting myself… But is that true?

Nori

Piccardi

2015

Cogn Process

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“…Although our study showed highly reliable sex differences in both the new virtual DMP task and the mental rotation test, with male participants performing on average better than female participants, the potential biological, psychological, and social/environmental factors underlying these sex differences (Baenninger & Newcombe, 1995;Hirnstein, Coloma Andrews, & Hausmann, 2014;Levine, Vasilyeva, Lourenco, Newcombe, & Huttenlocher, 2005;Padilla et al, 2017;Picucci, Caffò, & Bosco, 2011) remain largely to be clarified. For example, while organizational and activational effects of the male sex hormone testosterone have been implicated in male advantages in mental rotation and place learning performance in virtual maze tasks (see reviews in Hirnstein et al, 2014;Nowak, Diamond, Land, & Moffat, 2014), it has also been demonstrated that gender stereotypes and whether testing took place in mixed-or same-sex groups can affect cognitive sex differences, including in mental rotation (Hirnstein et al, 2014), and that "navigation" experience (as measured by how many of a list of local and national places participants had visited) affects sex differences in incremental place learning on a watermaze analogue (Padilla et al, 2017).…”

Section: Sex Differencesmentioning

confidence: 64%

A new human delayed‐matching‐to‐place test in a virtual environment reverse‐translated from the rodent watermaze paradigm: Characterization of performance measures and sex differences

Buckley

Bast

2018

Hippocampus

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Watermaze tests of place learning and memory in rodents and corresponding reverse‐translated human paradigms in real or virtual environments are key tools to study hippocampal function. In common variants, the animal or human participant has to find a hidden goal that remains in the same place over many trials, allowing for incremental learning of the place with reference to distal cues surrounding the circular, featureless maze. Although the hippocampus is involved in incremental place learning, rodent studies have shown that the delayed‐matching‐to‐place (DMP) watermaze test is a more sensitive assay of hippocampal function. On the DMP test, the goal location changes every four trials, requiring the rapid updating of place memory. Here, we developed a virtual DMP test reverse‐translated from the rat watermaze DMP paradigm. In two replications, participants showed 1‐trial place learning, evidenced by marked latency and path length savings between Trials 1 and 2 to the same goal location, and by search preference for the vicinity of the goal when Trial 2 was run as probe trial (during which the goal was removed). The performance was remarkably similar to rats' performance on the watermaze DMP test. In both replications, male participants showed greater savings and search preferences compared to female participants. Male participants also showed better mental rotation performance, although mental rotation scores did not consistently correlate with DMP performance measures, pointing to distinct neurocognitive mechanisms. The remarkable similarity between rodent and human DMP performance suggests similar underlying neuro‐psychological mechanisms, including hippocampus dependence. The new virtual DMP test may, therefore, provide a sensitive tool to probe human hippocampal function.

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“…Goeke et al 2015;Hegarty et al, 2006;Moffat et al, 1998;Kim et al, 2007;Picucci et al, 2011), we addressed the distribution of response strategies according to gender. We could not detect any gender bias in our data (x 2 (df =1, N=45), p=0.219).…”

Section: Analysis Of Possible Gender Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientation and metacognition in virtual space.

Tenbrink¹,

Salwiczek

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Abstract. Cognitive scientists increasingly use virtual reality scenarios to address spatial perception, orientation, and navigation. If based on desktops rather than mobile immersive environments, this involves a discrepancy between the physically experienced static position and the visually perceived dynamic scene, leading to cognitive challenges that users of virtual worlds may or may not be aware of. The frequently reported loss of orientation and worse performance in point-to-origin tasks relate to the difficulty of establishing a consistent reference system on an allocentric or egocentric basis. We address the verbalisability of spatial concepts relevant in this regard, along with the conscious strategies reported by participants. Behavioural and verbal data were collected using a perceptually sparse virtual tunnel scenario that has frequently been used to differentiate between humans' preferred reference systems. Surprisingly, the linguistic data we collected relate to reference system verbalisations known from the earlier literature only to a limited extent, but instead reveal complex cognitive mechanisms and strategies. Orientation in desktop VR appears to pose considerable challenges, which participants react to by conceptualising the task in individual ways that do not systematically relate to the generic concepts of egocentric and allocentric reference frames.

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Besides navigation accuracy: Gender differences in strategy selection and level of spatial confidence

Cited by 62 publications

References 80 publications

I believe I’m good at orienting myself… But is that true?

I believe I’m good at orienting myself… But is that true?

A new human delayed‐matching‐to‐place test in a virtual environment reverse‐translated from the rodent watermaze paradigm: Characterization of performance measures and sex differences

Orientation and metacognition in virtual space.

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