Imagine finding yourself on the sidewalk of a congested metropolitan street in a city you are unfamiliar with when you witness a truck fail to stop at a traffic light and subsequently smash into a sedan. As a self-identified good Samaritan, you choose to contact emergency services. How would you explain to the authorities where to find the scene of the accident? This situation highlights the interaction between cognition, behavior, and the external environment because appraisal from your unique perspective will determine the outcome you choose to follow through on. You may report the names of some businesses in the immediate area or the direction and approximate distance you walked from the public library. Consequently, these responses
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Early studies of sex-dependent wayfinding strategies such as that of MacFadden, Elias, and Saucier (2003) have been influential in establishing a broad acceptance that men rely more strongly on cardinal directions and distance descriptions. Men also tend to possess higher processing capacity for survey knowledge, information about relationships between landmarks. MacFadden et al. (2003) also argue that women have higher route knowledge (information about landmarks along a route) and rely on information from landmarks more than men. While some studies support these findings, the data appears mixed (Shelton & McNamara, 2004; Hund & Minarik, …show more content…
(2004) explicitly told participants to pay attention to the details of an indoor route they passed through before arriving in a room where a variety of memory disrupting tasks took place. After an hour and a half, the participants were asked to recall the shortest distance they would take between their current position and their starting point, the length of that route, and as many possible landmarks they passed along the route. Men were significantly more accurate in reconstructing the route and estimating its distance, however, there was no significant difference in the number of landmarks recalled or their relative positions. These findings support the results of Sandstrom et al. (1998) for the “stable landmark” treatment because both involve spatial memory. Male recall accuracy for route reconstruction and distance approximation also backs the survey knowledge hypothesis of MacFadden et al.
Early studies of sex-dependent wayfinding strategies such as that of MacFadden, Elias, and Saucier (2003) have been influential in establishing a broad acceptance that men rely more strongly on cardinal directions and distance descriptions. Men also tend to possess higher processing capacity for survey knowledge, information about relationships between landmarks. MacFadden et al. (2003) also argue that women have higher route knowledge (information about landmarks along a route) and rely on information from landmarks more than men. While some studies support these findings, the data appears mixed (Shelton & McNamara, 2004; Hund & Minarik, …show more content…
(2004) explicitly told participants to pay attention to the details of an indoor route they passed through before arriving in a room where a variety of memory disrupting tasks took place. After an hour and a half, the participants were asked to recall the shortest distance they would take between their current position and their starting point, the length of that route, and as many possible landmarks they passed along the route. Men were significantly more accurate in reconstructing the route and estimating its distance, however, there was no significant difference in the number of landmarks recalled or their relative positions. These findings support the results of Sandstrom et al. (1998) for the “stable landmark” treatment because both involve spatial memory. Male recall accuracy for route reconstruction and distance approximation also backs the survey knowledge hypothesis of MacFadden et al.