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Age and gender differences in spatial perspective taking

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Abstract

Background and aims

It is often necessary in daily experience to change one’s point of view to adopt mentally the spatial perspective of other persons, learn the position of different objects in a new environment or even describe an environment to other persons. Hence, the ability to link spatial information from different perspectives seems to be necessary to orient ourselves in the space. Several studies have found gender-related differences in spatial reasoning in younger adults, but little is known about such effects in middle-aged and older adults.

Methods

This research was designed to study how spatial perspective taking is affected by gender and age along the lifespan. The Perspective Taking/Spatial Orientation Test (PPT; Kozhevnikov and Hegarty [1]) was administered to groups of younger, middle-aged, and older adults, with females and males represented in each age group.

Results

The performance in the PPT decreased across age groups. All age groups had more errors in items that involved perspective changes of greater than 90º. Males performed better than females on most of the variables; however, no significant differences appeared in the interaction gender × age.

Conclusion

The present findings showed the relevance of the degree perspective change in visuo-spatial abilities, especially in the older group. In relation with the gender, males outperformed females; however, the interaction gender × age did not show significant differences.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all participants who gave their time. This work was supported by Ficyt 11-144 Grant and PSI 2013 42704P project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Neurociencias, Departamento de Psicología, Universidad de Oviedo, Plaza Feijoo s/n, 33003, Oviedo, Spain

    Clara Zancada-Menendez, Patricia Sampedro-Piquero & Laudino Lopez

  2. Instituto de Neurociencias Principado de Asturias (INEUROPA), Oviedo, Spain

    Clara Zancada-Menendez, Patricia Sampedro-Piquero & Laudino Lopez

  3. Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, 111 21st Ave South, Nashville, TN, 37203, USA

    Timothy P. McNamara

Authors
  1. Clara Zancada-Menendez
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  2. Patricia Sampedro-Piquero
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  3. Laudino Lopez
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  4. Timothy P. McNamara
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Correspondence to Clara Zancada-Menendez.

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Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. All participants signed an informed consent form prior to being interviewed.

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Zancada-Menendez, C., Sampedro-Piquero, P., Lopez, L. et al. Age and gender differences in spatial perspective taking. Aging Clin Exp Res 28, 289–296 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-015-0399-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-015-0399-z

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