The effects of familiarity and gender on spatial representation

Abstract

This paper reports a study of how familiarity and gender may influence the frames of reference used in memory to represent a real-world regularly shaped environment. Familiar and unfamiliar participants learned the locations of three triads of buildings by walking on a path which encircled each triad. Then they were shown with maps reproducing these triads at five different orientations (from 0° to 180°) and had to judge whether each triad represented correctly the relative positions between the buildings. Results showed that unfamiliar participants performed better when the orientation of triads was closer to the learning perspective (0° and 45°) and corresponded to front rather than to back positions. Instead, familiar participants showed a facilitation for triads oriented along orthogonal axes (0°–180°, 90°) and no difference between front and back positions. These findings suggested that locations of unfamiliar buildings were mentally represented in terms of egocentric frames of reference; instead, allocentric frames of reference defined by the environment were used when the environment was familiar. Finally, males were more accurate and faster than females, and this difference was particularly evident in participants unfamiliar with the environment.