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Relationship among Environmental Pointing Accuracy, Mental Rotation, Sex, and Hormones

Department of Geography at the University of Saskatchewan.

Deborah Saucier

Department of Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan.

Humans rely on internal representations to solve a variety of spatial problems including navigation. Navigation employs specific information to compose a representation of space that is distinct from that obtained through static bird’s-eye or horizontal perspectives. The ability to point to on-route locations, off-route locations, and the route origin illustrates the unique types of spatial knowledge that can be acquired during navigation. This research explores the accuracy with which men and women perform these types of pointing tasks to better understand the development and structure of their cognitive maps as a result of experience in the environment. Interestingly, it appears that endogenous concentrations of the sex hormone testosterone significantly predict pointing accuracy. This pattern is consistent with what is observed with pencil-and-paper tasks of spatial ability that may relate to environmental spatial abilities such as navigation.

Key Words: spatial abilities • hormones • sex differences • navigation • environmental cognition

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