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German Conference on Spatial Cognition

Spatial Cognition 2018: Spatial Cognition XI pp 244–257Cite as

State Anxiety Influences Sex Differences in Spatial Learning

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNAI,volume 11034)

Abstract

Past research shows consistent sex differences in survey-based spatial knowledge and wayfinding strategy. State anxiety may help to explain some of these differences. The current study tested if and how state anxiety influences sex differences in spatial learning during navigation. We used a virtual desktop spatial learning task and manipulated state anxiety between-subjects. Participants passively learned the locations of landmarks and then were tested using egocentric pointing and map landmark placement tasks. Results showed that males performed better than females overall, replicating past work. Further, state anxiety adversely affected pointing accuracy for females but not males. Males were more accurate in their cognitive maps and women’s cognitive maps appeared to be more spatially compressed than men’s across both anxiety conditions. Results are discussed in the context of how state anxiety might influence sex differences in the formation of survey representations dependent on spatial learning and assessment perspective.

Keywords

  • Spatial memory
  • Wayfinding
  • Sex differences
  • Anxiety

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This method was utilized instead of the Trier Social Stressor Task since men and women differentially respond to the Trier stressor [32]. Additionally, the stress response from the Trier might have lasted until the experimental testing phase, and we were interested in testing the effect of anxiety on spatial encoding, not testing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 08544, USA

    Ian T. Ruginski, Jeanine K. Stefanucci & Sarah H. Creem-Regehr

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  1. Ian T. Ruginski
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  2. Jeanine K. Stefanucci
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  3. Sarah H. Creem-Regehr
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Correspondence to Ian T. Ruginski .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

    Dr. Sarah Creem-Regehr

  2. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Johannes Schöning

  3. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Alexander Klippel

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Ruginski, I.T., Stefanucci, J.K., Creem-Regehr, S.H. (2018). State Anxiety Influences Sex Differences in Spatial Learning. In: Creem-Regehr, S., Schöning, J., Klippel, A. (eds) Spatial Cognition XI. Spatial Cognition 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11034. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96385-3_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96385-3_17

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