Sex differences in visuospatial and navigational working memory: the role of mood induced by background music
Sex differences in visuospatial and navigational working memory: the role of mood induced by background music
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DOI：
10.1007/s00221-016-4643-3
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发表时间：
2016-08-01
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Piccardi, Laura
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Palmiero, Massimiliano;Nori, Raffaella;Piccardi, Laura
视觉空间能力的性别差异争论已久。男性通常比女性表现得更好，尤其是在寻路或学习路线或地点序列方面。这些差异可能取决于女性在潜在空间能力方面的劣势，比如心理旋转，以及所使用的策略，以及情绪和对导航技能的自信，而与实际技能水平无关。本研究探讨了情绪情境下视觉空间记忆和导航工作记忆的性别差异。在进行Corsi积木敲击任务（CBT）和步行Corsi （WalCT）测试时，参与者的情绪被背景音乐（积极、消极或中性）所操纵。为了评估情绪控制的有效性，参与者在执行视觉空间任务之前和之后填写了积极和消极影响表。首先，结果表明，在情绪诱导后，只有积极情绪发生变化，而消极情绪不受情绪和性别的影响。这一发现与“群体”在所有测试中的主要影响是一致的：积极音乐组的得分明显高于其他组。其次，尽管男性在CBT向前组和WalCT向前和向后组中表现优于女性，但只有在消极背景音乐的WalCT中，他们的得分才高于女性。这意味着情绪不能完全解释视觉空间和导航工作记忆的性别差异。我们的研究结果表明，CBT和WalCT的性别差异可以用空间能力的差异而不是情感环境的差异来更好地解释。
Sex differences in visuospatial abilities are long debated. Men generally outperform women, especially in wayfinding or learning a route or a sequence of places. These differences might depend on women's disadvantage in underlying spatial competences, such as mental rotation, and on the strategies used, as well as on emotions and on self-belief about navigational skills, not related to actual skill-levels. In the present study, sex differences in visuospatial and navigational working memory in emotional contexts were investigated. Participants' mood was manipulated by background music (positive, negative or neutral) while performing on the Corsi Block-tapping Task (CBT) and Walking Corsi (WalCT) test. In order to assess the effectiveness of mood manipulation, participants filled in the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule before and after carrying out the visuospatial tasks. Firstly, results showed that after mood induction, only the positive affect changed, whereas the negative affect remained unconfounded by mood and by sex. This finding is in line with the main effect of 'group' on all tests used: the positive music group scored significantly higher than other groups. Secondly, although men outperformed women in the CBT forward condition and in the WalCT forward and backward conditions, they scored higher than women only in the WalCT with the negative background music. This means that mood cannot fully explain sex differences in visuospatial and navigational working memory. Our results suggest that sex differences in the CBT and WalCT can be better explained by differences in spatial competences rather than by emotional contexts.