The purpose of this study was to investigate and extend previously
reported sex differences in object location memory by comparing
the performance of heterosexual and homosexual males and females.
Subjects were 240 healthy, right-handed heterosexual and homosexual
males and females. They were instructed to study 16 common,
gender-neutral objects arranged randomly in an array and
subsequently tested for object recall, object recognition and
spatial location memory. Females recalled significantly more
objects than males, although there were no group differences
in object recognition. Decomposition of significant interactions
between sex and sexual orientation on spatial location memory
(controlling for differences in object recall, age and IQ) revealed
that heterosexual females and homosexual males scored better
than heterosexual males, and no different from each other. There
were no differences between homosexual and heterosexual females.
The findings suggest that homosexual males and heterosexual
females encode, store and retrieve positional and relational
information about spatial layouts similarly, pointing to within-sex
variations in the neural architecture underlying spatial memory.
(JINS, 2003, 9, 376–383.)
Sexual orientation related differences in spatial memory
