Male/Female Navigation differences

[andrewducker]

Microsoft has found that women tend to be about 20 per cent slower than men when working out where they are in a computer-generated world. So led by Desney Tan from Carnegie Mellon, Czerwinski and her Microsoft colleague George Robertson ran tests on volunteers to see if they could improve this.

They found that women were just as good as men at virtual navigation when they had a large computer display. "The gender difference simply disappeared," says Czerwinski. A standard monitor gives a viewing angle of about 35°. With a larger screen, giving a viewing angle of 70°, women navigated better. And with two screens delivering a 100° angle, women matched men's spatial abilities.

But there was a proviso. Women only matched men when the 3D virtual environment moved smoothly as they progressed through it. "You have to generate each image frame so the optical flow simulates accurately the experience of walking down, say, a hallway," says Robertson. Women, they found, find it easier to get their bearings when this animation is smooth and realistic, rather than jerky.

This might seem obvious, but many 3D software packages do not "render" the images smoothly, preferring to jump from one point to another in the environment as users progress through it. "You just appear magically in a new place, and women find that far inferior to having a smooth optical flow of the environment," says Czerwinski. Something about the jerky motion appears more disorienting to women than men.

This ties into my anecdotal view that men navigate by internal maps (allowing for swift reorientation), while women navigate by landmarks (meaning that a jump from one place to another means realigning yourself with places that you know). But that's just my theory.

Article here.

Comments

[weetanya.livejournal.com]

Explains a lot. Heh.

But something inside of me can't help wondering if the study is a lot like Yerkes' discovery that women trade sex for bananas. "Because there's a correlation between the study group who can't navigate as well and women, it's got to be _because_ they are women."

[andrewducker]

Oh, absolutely. It's a pointer, a reason for more investigation. One of the things I like about science is that it's never finished - it's always a work in progress and a collection of theories.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

Possibly a throwback to nomadic days - women would be the gatherers so they would look at the land changing around them as they went. This was very important as plants have different physical characteristics in different areas, the change is usually spatially gradual. If you just *jumped* you might not recognise them anymore, end up eating something poisonous.

[autodidactic.livejournal.com]

I know that Matt navigates by physical maps much more so than I do; and I think that's simply because I get out more often. Also, it's because I don't drive as much as he does... I get to look out the window and see the landscape and know where we are relative to everything, as opposed to what's only straight ahead.

A.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the level of difference would have been if all subject had approximately the same level of experience and familiarity with video games.

[andrewducker]

Definitely a good question. I've noticed women complaining that they find it hard to know where they are in computer games before, but I've never known if it was because they play so little of them or if it was because they just weren't suited.

I suspect you really need to grab people at very early stages of development to find the answer to that one.