Spatial Ability and Home-Range Size: Examining the Relationship in Western Men and Women (Homo sapiens).

Abstract

In mammals, spatial sex differences may have coevolved with sex differences in the size of home ranges. This study first evaluated whether, in keeping with most mammals and traditional human (Homo sapiens) societies, home ranges are larger in male than in female Westerners. Second, it established whether navigation patterns are associated with a broader set of spatial abilities in men than in women. Results showed that current male home ranges surpass female home ranges. Ranging was also positively correlated with achievement in tests of mental rotation, surface development, and location memory among men only, whereas it was associated with embedded figures scores in both sexes. Overall, these findings substantiate the adaptive role of several spatial sex differences in humans.

The Hunter-Gatherer Theory of Sex Differences in Spatial Abilities: Data from 40 Countries

“…Thus, males may be innately programmed to explore larger areas than females from an early point in ontogeny, which may represent a critical period in which sex differences in spatial strategies develop in response to the differential requirements for navigating larger vs. smaller spaces. Studies in both children Nerlove, Munroe, & Munroe, 1971) and adults (Ecuyer-Dab & Robert, 2004b) have found positive correlations between home range size and various male biased spatial abilities for males only. This may represent partial support of the theory above, although the question of why the correlations do not occur also for females remains to be resolved.…”

The Female Advantage in Object Location Memory According to the Foraging Hypothesis: A Critical Analysis

“…Indeed, Silverman and Eals_s (1992;Eals and Silverman 1994) results have been substantiated in replications of both their incidental and intentional in situ procedures, in which common objects had to be put back in place (Hill et al 1995) or pictures of them had to be repositioned within an illustration of the display room (Montello et al 1999). With the original paper-andpencil format and incidental encoding (thus far intentional conditions have not been tested), women_s greater recognition of the locations of common objects was also reproduced (Barnfield 1999, setting 1;Ecuyer-Dab and Robert 2004b;Gaulin et al 1997;James and Kimura 1997, setting 1). Whereas Silverman and Eals had combined the recognition of both stationary and moved objects into a global score, more informative data analyses conducted separately for each class of objects have established that the female superiority is manifest within both classes (Robert and Ecuyer-Dab 2000).…”

Sex differences in virtual navigation influenced by scale and navigation experience

“…Some have argued that navigation in small spaces might not simulate natural human navigation (Learmonth, Newcombe, Sheridan, & Jones 2008). In addition, in many populations, males have larger range sizes than females (e.g., Ecuyer-Dab & Robert, 2004;Santos, McGuckin, Nakamoto, Gray, & Liss, 2011;Vashro, Padilla, & Cashdan, 2016) and studies show a relationship between spatial abilities and range size (EcuyerDab & Robert, 2004;Vashro & Cashdan, 2015). To determine whether both scale and navigation experience influence sex differences in cue use during navigation, we examined performance in a traditional small-scale virtual Morris water maze (Morris, 1984), a widely used spatial abilities test developed for animals and adapted for humans, and a large-scale version, along with collecting a novel measure of self-reported navigation experience.…”

“…Some research suggests that sex differences in range size can predict spatial abilities including mental rotation and object location memory in western populations (Ecuyer-Dab & Robert, 2004;Jones, Braithwaite, & Healy, 2003) as well as in hunter-gatherer societies (e.g., Vashro & Cashdan, 2015). Other related research on spatial cognitive development shows that older children, who have more practice navigating in large-scale spaces than younger children, can generalize their experience to spatial tasks in small-scale spaces while younger children show difficulty performing the same task in large and small spaces (Learmonth et al, 2002).…”