Boys Outperform Girls in Giving Accurate Directions, New Study Says

Boys aged 3 to 10 years old outperform girls in giving directions more accurately, according to a new study by Psychology researchers at Montclair State University.

In the research study, titled “Sex differences in direction giving: Are boys better than girls?” and published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the young participants were asked to describe and recall routes from two perspectives: survey (viewing a marked path on a map) and route (viewing video of someone walking inside a virtual reality maze). After viewing the map and video, the children were asked to give directions about the route.

This research study was conducted by doctoral student Nardin Yacoub, Laura Lakusta and Jennifer Yang from the Psychology Department’s Spatial Development Lab.

Why it matters

Having a better understanding of navigational preferences between sexes could help design training programs to improve children’s spatial skills. It may also provide educators and caregivers with better tools to teach children how to give and understand directions.

For example, the findings show it may be more useful to teach children to use maps than watch someone else navigate. Educators and parents may also pay more attention to how accurately children use direction words (e.g., left, right), whether children correctly identify useful landmarks and how children combine direction words and landmark words.

Looking ahead, the findings also shed light on the individual differences in spatial navigation in children. It in turn could help bridge the gender gap, especially in STEM-related fields.

What the researchers say

The study was inspired by the researchers’ desire to understand how cognitive abilities develop differently between boys and girls, and has the potential to aid parents and educators in enhancing their children’s spatial skills.

“Our findings provide insights into the broader claims regarding gender differences in spatial and language skills,” says Yacoub, PhD candidate at the University and one of the authors of the study. “Interestingly, our results demonstrated that from ages 3 to 10 years, boys give more accurate directions than girls, and both boys’ and girls’ directions are more precise when using bird’s eye view maps compared to a first-person perspective.

“It is important to note that these differences were only found when children were asked to describe the route while watching the video or viewing the map. There were no differences between boys and girls when the participants were asked to recall the routes from memory later on.”

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