SPACE REPRESENTATION AND GENDER DIFFERENCES

Scientific literature highlighted gender differences in spatial orientation. In particular, men and women differ in terms of the navigational processes they use in daily life. Scientific literature highlighted that women use analytical strategies while men tend to use holistic strategies. According to classical studies, males show a net advantage at least in the two categories of mental rotation and spatial perception. Subsequently, brainimaging studies have shown a difference between males and females in the activity of brain regions involved in spatial cognition tasks. What we can say with certainty is that, given the complex nature of the sub processes involved in what we call spatial cognition, the gender differences recorded by numerous scientific studies conducted in this field are closely related to specific measured abilities. The evidence that emerges with certainty from diverse studies is, however, that of a huge variety of strategies that differ according to sex, context, purpose to reach, education, age, and profession. In the study presented here, the gender and age-related tests show a significant sex-based difference in perspective-taking tasks, but there is no genderbased difference in the mental rotation task.