Human spatial representation : looking at sex differences for processing geometric information

Spatial ability is a part of memory that is responsible for recording information about one’s environment and its spatial orientation. For example, a person’s spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city, just as a rat’s spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze. This current study focuses on whether sex differences appear on such spatially loaded tasks. Research has shown that males do in fact perform better on spatial loaded tasks than females. Participants were to remember the location of a red dot on a rotating rectangle on two tasks. The first task included featural information, (a white stripe on one side) and the other task had no featural information. On the first task, no differences were found. On the second task males performed differently. Results of the study indicate that males relied purely on geometric properties of the rectangle while females relied more on featural information when locating a target in the environment.