Newhouse Paul, Newhouse Christopher, Astur Robert S
Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Vermont College of Medicine, 1 South Prospect St., Burlington, VT, United States.
Behav Brain Res. 2007 Oct 1;183(1):1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2007.05.011. Epub 2007 May 13.
Gonadal steroid effects during puberty are often hypothesized to account for the male advantage seen in certain spatial tasks. One spatial task where males consistently show better performance than females is the Morris Water Task in which subjects must navigate to a goal location in a pool. We examined whether sex differences exist in pre-pubertal children completing a Virtual Morris Water Task, which has previously shown strong sex differences in adults. Pre-pubertal boys show superior performance to similar-aged girls, as evidenced by shorter latencies to find the platform and stronger preferences for the platform location during a probe trial. These results suggest that sex differences in spatial learning and memory exist prior to puberty and do not appear to require the effects of sex hormones at puberty. Rather, these differences may reflect early-life hormonal effects on hippocampal-dependent processes and may suggest different preferential learning strategies by boys and girls.
青春期期间性腺类固醇的作用常被假定为是某些空间任务中男性优势的原因。男性在空间任务中表现始终优于女性的一个例子是莫里斯水迷宫任务，在该任务中，受试者必须在水池中找到目标位置。我们研究了在完成虚拟莫里斯水迷宫任务的青春期前儿童中是否存在性别差异，此前该任务已在成年人中显示出明显的性别差异。青春期前男孩的表现优于同龄女孩，这在探测试验中表现为找到平台的潜伏期更短，以及对平台位置的偏好更强。这些结果表明，空间学习和记忆方面的性别差异在青春期之前就已存在，似乎并不需要青春期性激素的作用。相反，这些差异可能反映了早期生活中激素对海马体依赖过程的影响，也可能表明男孩和女孩有不同的偏好学习策略。
