Postma A, Izendoorn R, De Haan E H
Department of Psychonomics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, 3584 CS, The Netherlands.
Brain Cogn. 1998 Apr;36(3):334-45. doi: 10.1006/brcg.1997.0974.
The ability to remember where objects were is thought to require multiple separate processes. One has to encode the precise positions occupied, assign the various objects to the correct (relative) locations, and achieve an integration of both types of spatial information. This study examined whether sex differences exist for these selective components of object location memory. Twenty males and 20 females participated in the following task. On a PC screen, they were shown a square with 10 different objects for 30 s. Subsequently, the objects disappeared from the screen, reappeared in a row above the square, and subjects were asked to relocate them in three different conditions. In the object-to-position-assignment condition, the original positions were premarked in the square, so subjects needed only to assign the correct object to the correct position. In the positions-only condition, all objects assumed the same identity. Therefore, subjects had only to reproduce the precise positions. Finally, in the combined condition, subjects were required to replace all the different objects in the square without any of object positions premarked. The absolute displacements between an object's original and its relocated position reflect the integration mechanism. Females did as well as males in the object-to-position-assignment condition and on the absolute displacements in the combined condition, but they were less efficient than males in positional reconstruction per se. Thus, it seems that the male advantage in spatial memory is not a general effect but applies only to certain specific processing components. Moreover, the employment of a dual task during encoding, concurrent articulatory suppression, yielded no significant interactions with sex. This suggests that females' weaker positional encoding does not derive from the use of an inefficient verbal strategy.
记住物体位置的能力被认为需要多个独立的过程。人们必须对物体所占据的精确位置进行编码，将各种物体分配到正确的（相对）位置，并实现这两种空间信息的整合。本研究考察了物体位置记忆的这些选择性成分是否存在性别差异。20名男性和20名女性参与了以下任务。在个人电脑屏幕上，他们会看到一个有10个不同物体的正方形，持续30秒。随后，物体从屏幕上消失，重新出现在正方形上方的一排中，受试者被要求在三种不同条件下重新放置它们。在物体到位置分配条件下，正方形中预先标记了原始位置，所以受试者只需要将正确的物体分配到正确的位置。在仅位置条件下，所有物体具有相同的标识。因此，受试者只需要重现精确的位置。最后，在组合条件下，要求受试者在正方形中替换所有不同的物体，且没有预先标记任何物体位置。物体原始位置和重新放置位置之间的绝对位移反映了整合机制。在物体到位置分配条件下以及组合条件下的绝对位移方面，女性和男性表现相当，但在位置重建本身方面，女性比男性效率低。因此，似乎男性在空间记忆方面的优势不是普遍效应，而仅适用于某些特定的处理成分。此外，在编码过程中采用双重任务，即同时进行发音抑制，与性别没有显著的交互作用。这表明女性较弱的位置编码并非源于使用低效的言语策略。
