Wayfinding Strategies and Sense of Direction in Local Environment: Exploring Gender Differences

Abstract

Navigation is a fundamental human behaviour and studies reported that males and females differ (favouring males) in their navigating abilities, strategies, and performance in locating targets either on the map or computer-based simulated tasks (Malinowski, 2001; Astur, Ortiz & Sutherland, 1998). At the same time, few studies reported no gender differences when landmarks were consistently present throughout the task of finding the route to the destination in the building. Studies on way-finding strategies found that males and females differ in their orientation strategies, where males preferentially use survey orientation strategies with an emphasis on distances, vectors, and cardinal directions (e.g. north, west) and Females, on the other hand, are in more favour of route based strategies using topographical features including landmarks and relative directions. Keeping in view, the present study is aimed to explore gender differences in wayfinding strategies. A total of 112 (53 male and 59 female) students (mean age 19.68 years and age range from 17 to 24 years) enrolled in the graduate course in different colleges of Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur participated in the present study. Independent t-test showed significant gender differences in two different wayfinding strategies favouring males, suggesting that males use route and orientation strategies better than females depending upon context.