Sneider Jennifer T, Hamilton Derek A, Cohen-Gilbert Julia E, Crowley David J, Rosso Isabelle M, Silveri Marisa M
Neurodevelopmental Laboratory on Addictions and Mental Health, McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
Behav Processes. 2015 Feb;111:42-50. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2014.11.015. Epub 2014 Nov 25.
Males typically outperform females on spatial tasks, beginning early in life and continuing into adulthood. This study aimed to characterize age and sex differences in human spatial ability using a virtual Water Maze Task (vWMT), which is based on the classic Morris water maze spatial navigation task used in rodents. Performance on the vWMT and on a task assessing visuospatial perception, Mental Rotations Test (MRT), was examined in 33 adolescents and 39 emerging adults. For the vWMT, significant effects of age and sex were observed for path length in the target region (narrower spatial sampling), and heading error, with emerging adults performing better than adolescents, and an overall male advantage. For the MRT, males scored higher than females, but only in emerging adulthood. Overall, sex differences in visuospatial perception (MRT) emerge differently from those observed on a classic navigation task, with age and sex-specific superior vWMT performance likely related to the use of more efficient strategies. Importantly, these results extend the developmental timeline of spatial ability characterization to include adolescent males and females performing a virtual version of the classic vWMT.
男性通常在空间任务上表现优于女性，这种差异从生命早期开始并持续到成年期。本研究旨在使用虚拟水迷宫任务（vWMT）来描述人类空间能力的年龄和性别差异，该任务基于啮齿动物中使用的经典莫里斯水迷宫空间导航任务。对33名青少年和39名刚成年的人进行了vWMT任务以及一项评估视觉空间感知的任务——心理旋转测试（MRT）。对于vWMT，在目标区域的路径长度（较窄的空间采样）和航向误差方面观察到了年龄和性别的显著影响，刚成年的人表现优于青少年，且总体上男性具有优势。对于MRT，男性得分高于女性，但仅在刚成年期如此。总体而言，视觉空间感知（MRT）方面的性别差异与经典导航任务中观察到的情况不同，年龄和性别特异性的vWMT优越表现可能与使用更有效的策略有关。重要的是，这些结果将空间能力特征的发展时间线扩展到包括执行经典vWMT虚拟版本的青少年男性和女性。
