A Vanishing Sex Difference in the Virtual Morris Water Task

Sex differences are frequently, however, not consistently found in the domain of spatial navigation in mammalian species. Using a virtual Morris water task (VMWT) we tested the hypothesis that differential use of proximal and distal cues between males and females could account for previously observed human differences. In Astur, Ortiz, and Sutherland (1998) males had faster swim latencies to a hidden platform, and smaller heading errors in the VMWT. We alternated blocks of fixed-across blocks and fixed-within blocks platform locations. Males found the hidden platform faster overall in both conditions. However the interleaved blocks eliminated the performance difference between the groups in the first trial of both the stationary and nonstationary platform blocks, indicating that females were less affected than males by the change in the reliability of the cognitive map (O’ Keefe & Nadel, 1978) of the stationary blocks for the interleaved blocks. This is in line with studies indicating differential preferences and abilities to use distal or geometric cues (e.g., Sandstrom, Kaufmann, & Heuttel, 1998). Therefore, the mixed results seen in spatial navigation regarding sex differences are due in part to the cue types available in a given task environment.