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Girls' and boys' success and strategies on a computer‐generated hunting task
Author(s) -
Hay Dale F.,
Lockwood Randall
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1989.tb00785.x
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , foraging , developmental psychology , computer game , spatial ability , cognition , ecology , computer science , multimedia , management , economics , biology , neuroscience
In two experiments, 6‐ and 10‐year‐old girls and boys played a computer game that simulated a hunting problem for an animal forager. Girls and boys were equally successful at this stereotypically masculine spatial task, and both girls and boys foraged optimally in terms of the theoretical predictions of the ecological theory of optimal foraging. Only one minor sex difference appeared: girls tended to use slightly more careful strategies than did boys. This finding corroborates other reports that sex differences in spatial problem solving may be due in part to girls' excessive use of caution.