The Influence of Environmental Exploration on Geographic Performance among Adolescents: A Gender and Cross-cultural Analysis

Wridt, Pamela J.; Boehm, Richard G.

doi:10.1080/10382040008667653

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Others (Beatty & Tröster, 1987;Bourchier et al, 2002;Cross, 1987;Eve et al, 1994;Montello et al, 1999) failed to find a difference in travel experience between men and women when the performance of men was better on geographic knowledge. However, some investigators have found a difference: Ward et al (1986) found more driving time and superior direction-giving performance for men with unfamiliar maps; Bein (1990) and Galea and Kimura (1993) reported that men had more years of driving experience and drove more hours per week than did women and that they also displayed better route-learning than women; Beatty (1989) found that geographic knowledge increased with increasing travel history; and Wridt and Boehm (2000) found that there was a positive correlation between travel and test performance for 13-year-old boys, but a negative correlation for girls. Thus, overall, the relationship between geographic knowledge and travel experience has been conflicted.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…To measure the role of nature, a second objective of the present studies was to determine if travel experience relates to gender differences in knowledge of geography. In this vein, Wridt and Boehm (2000) asked 13-year olds (of diverse ethnic backgrounds) from Texas to take a standardized geography test of the National Council of Geographic Education and to keep a diary of all of the places they visited for 1 week. The researchers reported a positive correlation overall between geographic knowledge and travel experience for the male adolescents but a negative correlation for the female adolescents; they concluded that travel experience for girls might be different from that of boys.…”

Section: Nurturementioning

confidence: 99%

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Site Distance, Gender, and Knowledge of Geographic Sites

2004

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The primary purpose of the experiments presented in this report was to study systematically the geographic site-name, associative memory of male and female college students (predominantly White and middle class) for locations that varied in distance: local, national, and international sites. In the first experiment, participants were to match listed names of campus buildings and local cities with their marked locations on maps. In the second experiment, under a site-name memory, a site-name/map-aid memory, and a map-aid/name-aid memory (site-name associative memory) condition, participants were to recall or match as many of the 50 US states and the 25 largest US cities as they could. In the third experiment, the participants were to match a listed grouping of the world's largest bodies of water and continents, a set of countries, and the world's largest cities, with their marked locations on maps. In the first experiment, men matched significantly more local cities than did women; in the second experiment, men recalled significantly more of the cities under the site-name/map-aid and the map-aid/name-aid memory conditions than did women; and in the third experiment, men matched significantly more sites on all three maps than did women. The absence of gender differences for campus buildings and states may have been a product of the participants having had extensive opportunities to learn these sites. That men displayed greater knowledge of cities and international sites suggests that they have a greater interest in geography than do women. Because of the limitations of the methodology used, the gender differences favoring men could not be interpreted as primarily a product of nature or of nurture, and thus it was concluded that they were a joint product of nature and nurture.

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