Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Dev Sci. 2011 Nov;14(6):1365-78. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01086.x. Epub 2011 Sep 9.
When geometric and non-geometric information are both available for specifying location, men have been shown to rely more heavily on geometry compared to women. To shed insight on the nature and developmental origins of this sex difference, we examined how 18- to 24-month-olds represented the geometry of a surrounding (rectangular) space when direct non-geometric information (i.e. a beacon) was also available for localizing a hidden object. Children were tested on a disorientation task with multiple phases. Across experiments, boys relied more heavily than girls on geometry to guide localization, as indicated by their errors during the initial phase of the task, and by their search choices following transformations that left only geometry available, or that, under limited conditions, created a conflict between beacon and geometry. Analyses of search times suggested that girls, like boys, had encoded geometry, and testing in a square space ruled out explanations concerned with motivational and methodological variables. Taken together, the findings provide evidence for an early sex difference in the weighting of geometry. This sex difference, we suggest, reflects subtle variation in how boys and girls approach the problem of combining multiple sources of location information.
当几何和非几何信息都可用于指定位置时，与女性相比，男性更倾向于依赖几何信息。为了深入了解这种性别差异的本质和发展起源，我们研究了 18 至 24 个月大的婴儿在周围（矩形）空间的几何形状有直接的非几何信息（即信标）可用时，如何表示隐藏物体的位置。儿童在具有多个阶段的定向任务中接受测试。在所有实验中，男孩比女孩更依赖于几何形状来引导定位，这从任务的初始阶段他们的错误以及在仅保留几何形状或在有限条件下，在信标和几何形状之间产生冲突的变换之后的搜索选择中可以看出。搜索时间的分析表明，女孩和男孩一样，已经对几何形状进行了编码，并且在正方形空间中的测试排除了与动机和方法变量有关的解释。综上所述，这些发现为几何形状权重的早期性别差异提供了证据。我们认为，这种性别差异反映了男孩和女孩在组合多种位置信息来源时的细微差异。
