Males and females scan maps similarly, but give directions differently Alastair MacFadden, Lorin Elias, and Deborah Saucier Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada Accepted 7 May 2003 Abstract After studying routes on a map, females tend to give directions that feature landmarks and left/right turns, whereas males include more cardinal and distance information. It is plausible this difference results from disparate attention to these features during exploration of a map. In the present study, 22 males and 22 females learned routes on a map while their eye movements were monitored, and then gave written directions between different locations. Consistent with earlier research, males made more refer- ences to NSEW when giving directions, whereas females referred mainly to left/right turns and landmarks along each route. However, these reporting biases were not related to differences in how the groups explored the maps, as females did not spend more time looking at landmarks, nor did either group spend more time looking at Euclidean cues. Thus, despite sexually dimorphic route descriptions, there was not dimorphic exploration or attention to the salient features. Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Maps yield an immediate, survey-level perspective on an environment (Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth, 1982). This perspective includes specific orientation and dis- tance information that may lead to the description of space based on these Euclidean properties. When asked to give directions based on maps, however, distance and orientation to North, South, East and West (NSEW) are not always used (Galea & Kimura, 1993). Moreover, males and females tend to provide different information when giving directions after studying maps. Males recall more cardinal directions (e.g., NSEW) and distance information than females when describing mapped environments from memory (Dabbs, Chang, Strong, & Milun, 1998; Galea & Kimura, 1993; Miller & Santoni, 1986; Ward, Newcombe, & Overton, 1986). Males have shown more aptitude than females for using this Euclidean information in real-world and pencil-and- paper navigation tasks (Saucier et al., 2002), and they tend to report using a Euclidean strategy when exploring the real-world (Lawton, 1994). By contrast, a topo- graphic strategy is typically evident among females, who describe landmarks along a route and transpositions using an egocentric (e.g., left/right) frame of reference (Miller & Santoni, 1986). Although some report that females include more landmarks and left/right turns than males when giving directions (Dabbs et al., 1998), others do not (Miller & Santoni, 1986; Ward et al., 1986). Lawton (1994) indicates that females may prefer a topographic strategy in real-world tasks, whereas Saucier et al. (2002) suggest that females make fewer errors than males when employing this type of infor- mation on pencil and paper tasks. In this investigation we explore the origins of these sex-related strategies by examining how males and fe- males study maps before giving directions from mem- ory. The methods are based on earlier work by Dabbs et al. (1998) who report the sex-related exploration strategies and sexually dimorphic geographic knowl- edge of the world. Such differences in geographic knowledge may contribute to (or be a consequence of) dimorphic exploration of spatial features when reading maps. Miller and Santoni (1986) state that sex-related strategies and skills result from ‘‘... sex differences in the reliance upon topological versus Euclidean aspects of spatial arrays in constructing internal maps’’ (p. 229). Likewise, Dabbs et al. (1998) indicate that males and females differ in their skills applicable to handling different aspects of the environment. Therefore males and females describe environments differently because they may attend to different information when exploring a spatial array and deriving a mental repre- sentation. 0278-2626/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0278-2626(03)00130-1 Brain and Cognition 53 (2003) 297–300 www.elsevier.com/locate/b&c