Sex Differences and the Role of Gaming Experience in Spatial Cognition Performance in Primary School Children: An Exploratory Study

Brain Sciences

Claudia van Dun¹  Gabriele Janzen¹  Alex van Kraaij¹  Esther Aarts¹  Joost Wegman¹  Jorrit Kuipers² 

[1] Donders Institute for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 XZ Nijmegen, The Netherlands;Green Dino, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands;

关键词: spatial cognitive development;    object location memory;    navigation;    virtual reality;    sex differences;    gaming experience;   

DOI  :  10.3390/brainsci11070886

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Sex differences are repeatedly observed in spatial cognition tasks. However, the role of environmental factors such as gaming experience remains unclear. In this exploratory study, navigation and object-relocation were combined in a naturalistic virtual reality-based spatial task. The sample consisted of n = 53 Dutch children aged 9–11 years. Overall, girls (n = 24) and boys (n = 29) performed equally accurately, although there was an increase in accuracy with age for boys (η_p² = 0.09). Boys navigated faster than girls (η_p² = 0.29), and this difference increased with age (η_p² = 0.07). More gaming experience in boys versus girls (Cohen’s d = 0.88) did not explain any result observed. We encourage future confirmatory studies to use the paradigm presented here to investigate the current results in a larger sample. These findings could be beneficial for optimizing spatial cognition training interventions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown