The influence of regional landmarks (color zones) on sex differences in spatial navigation: The moderating role of sense of direction

While research has extensively examined how global and local landmarks influence sex differences in spatial navigation, the effects of regional landmarks—visual features that demarcate different sections within complex environments (like color zones in hospitals)—remain unexplored. These landmarks provide general location information but offer neither the precise positional information of local landmarks nor the orientational information of global landmarks. We investigate how regional landmarks affect sex differences in navigation and subsequent decision-making, examining whether these effects are moderated by self-reported sense of direction (SOD). Participants (N = 84) completed wayfinding tasks of varied difficulty in virtual environments with or without regional landmarks, followed by value-based decision-making tasks that depends on the learning outcome of the previous wayfinding tasks. We find that regional landmarks' effects on sex differences are moderated by SOD. In route-learning tasks with regional landmarks present, low-SOD men outperformed low-SOD women, whereas high-SOD women performed equally or better than high-SOD men. In task that required cognitive mapping, the SOD effect disappeared; women performed comparably to men with regional landmarks present but performed significantly worse without them. Additionally, when controlling for the consistency in basing decision-making on previous experiences, high-SOD women were more risk-taking with regional landmarks. These findings help reconcile mixed results in the literature on sex differences in landmark utilization and decision-making, and highlight the importance of considering the interaction between environmental factors and spatial ability in understanding the sex differences in spatial navigation. Our results also have practical implications for designing navigational aids in complex buildings.