Sex‐Related Differences and Similarities in Geographic and Environmental Spatial Abilities

On average, males have reliably been found to outperform females on several traditional psychometric tests of spatial ability, especially those involving a component of mental rotation. The evidence is much less clear and complete with respect to performance on larger-scale and more ecologically valid tasks generally associated with geographic investigation, such as those involved in wayfinding, map use, and place learning. In this study, a community sample of 43 females and 36 males performed a large battery of spatial and geographic tasks. The battery included psychometric tests; tests of directly acquired spatial knowledge from a campus walk; map-learning tests; tests of extant geographic knowledge at local, regional, national, and international scales; tests of object-location memory; a verbal spatial task; and various self-report measures of spatial competence and style. Both univariate means tests and multivariate discriminant analyses largely agree on a comprehensive picture of the spatial abilitie...