EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIENCE ON SPATIAL ABILITY IN AN EAST AFRICAN SOCIETY.

In exploratory testing, a finding was made that Logoli male children were more skillful than Logoli female children at certain tests requiring the capacity to perform a set of behaviors ordered sequentially in space. As it had been casually noted that boys seemed to be more away from their immediate home areas than girls, the hypothesis was advanced that extensive movement through the environment might lead to enhanced spatial ability. To test this hypothesis, a two-phase study was carried out. In the first phase, an observational study, it was found that in free time Logoli boys between the ages of three and seven were in fact farther from home on the average than age-matched Logoli girls. In the second phase, consisting of a set of tests, it was found that children who were farther from home on the average than their age-matched counterparts were also more skillful at the spatial task of copying block patterns. The possible contributions of both innate sex differences and sex-role differences to male environmental experience and male spatial abilities were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]