Comparing the Sexes on Spatial Abilities: Map-Use Skills.

Studies by psychologists suggest that males are more proficient than females in performing many types of spatial tasks. There is no information, however, as to whether the results of psychological research are relevant and applicable to geography. This paper summarizes psychologists' views of spatial skills, discusses them from a geographical perspective, and reports the results of five map-use experiments that were analyzed for sex-based differences among participants. Two of the studies, one with fourth-grade students and one with undergraduates, tested the students' ability to use cartographic illustrations as an aid to learning geographic information. The remaining experiments investigated how well male and female children and adults could perform typical map-use tasks such as route planning, symbol identification, visual search and estimation, and right/left orientation. In both sets of studies, the main sex-based differences were found in the younger age groups, where boys' performance was superior to girls'. Among college students, map-use scores for females and males were almost identical. These results suggest that the findings of psychologists regarding sex-based and developmental patterns in spatial abilities may not be directly transferable to geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]