Sex Differences and the Role of Gaming Experience in Spatial Cognition Performance in Primary School Children: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Sex differences are repeatedly observed in spatial cognition tasks. However, the role of environmental factors such as gaming experience remains unclear. In this exploratory study, navigation and object-relocation were combined in a naturalistic virtual reality-based spatial task. The sample consisted of n = 53 Dutch children aged 9–11 years. Overall, girls (n = 24) and boys (n = 29) performed equally accurately, although there was an increase in accuracy with age for boys (ηp2 = 0.09). Boys navigated faster than girls (ηp2 = 0.29), and this difference increased with age (ηp2 = 0.07). More gaming experience in boys versus girls (Cohen’s d = 0.88) did not explain any result observed. We encourage future confirmatory studies to use the paradigm presented here to investigate the current results in a larger sample. These findings could be beneficial for optimizing spatial cognition training interventions.

Development of Landmark Use for Navigation in Children: Effects of Age, Sex, Working Memory and Landmark Type

“…The analyses on the rotations showed that, whereas boys and girls did not differ when egocentric navigation strategies could be used, boys outperformed girls in metrical allocentric processing and showed a smaller difference between categorical egocentric and allocentric processing than girls. This is in line with findings by van Dun and colleagues [ 18 ] who showed that boys between 9 and 11 years of age outperform girls in a virtual spatial navigation task (see also [ 17 ]), and research in adults showing superior performance in allocentric tasks in males in combination with equal performance on egocentric tasks [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 58 ]. However, diverging results are also found in children, including no sex differences in performance [ 15 , 16 ], better navigational skills in girls [ 52 , 59 ], and the use of different navigational strategies between girls and boys [ 60 , 61 , 62 ].…”

“…Further studies observed sex differences favoring boys [ 17 ]. A recent study used a virtual spatial navigation task and observed that boys were more accurate and navigated faster than girls [ 18 ]. In line with findings by Newcombe [ 9 ], this difference between girls and boys between 9 and 11 years increased with age.…”

Eye-Movements During Navigation in a Virtual Environment: Sex Differences and Relationship to Sex Hormones

“…Men tend to play more video games, which in turn relates to more experience with virtual environments, compared to women (Terlecki and Newcombe, 2005;Quaiser-Pohl et al, 2006;Terlecki et al, 2011). However, recent studies demonstrate that sex differences in video gaming experience do not mediate the sex differences observed during virtual navigation (Harris et al, 2019;van Dun et al, 2021). Accordingly, when video gaming experience is controlled and the 3D navigation task constructed in a way, that advantages due to video gaming experience are minimal, virtual navigation allows us to create similar conditions to real-life navigation, while controlling various aspects about the environment.…”

Application of Virtual Reality in Spatial Memory

“…It includes eight contributions covering the application of VR for both children and adults. Six studies investigate which factors affect spatial navigation in VR: two investigate these factors during developmental ages (i.e., [10,11]), and the other four focus on young adults (i.e., [12][13][14][15]). One study reviews the applications of radial arm maze in both virtual and real versions (i.e., [16]), and the study by Zucchelli et al [17] shows how VR can be a proper differential diagnosis tool for mild agoraphobia disorders.…”

“…van Dunn and colleagues [10] focused instead on other factors that might affect performance in a virtual environment. Mainly, they investigated the gaming experience in children 9 to 11 years of age, taking into account that girls generally play video games less than boys and that this factor could have a bearing in determining the gender differences in adulthood that also emerge in the two studies mentioned above ( [12,13]).…”