Sex of player and practice in lateral discrimination and videogame performance

Videogame sessions stimulating surrogate travel were used as navigational training for four days. Four paper-and-pencil measures were obtained to identify characteristics underlying acquisition of navigational skill. These included a map reading test to assess spatial orientation, a self-report questionnaire (Spatial Anxiety Scale) and two orientation tasks requiring discrimination of compass directions and relative position, i.e., right-left. Game performance was related to both scores on spatial anxiety and right-left discrimination. Skill acquisition curves did not differ for the 8 men and 13 women.