Recent work has suggested that sex differences may exist in the strategies or types of cues that are utilized by men and women to remember discrete spatial locations or routes through a visual environment. The current study investigated the effects of circulating estradiol levels in women on the relative weighting of categorical versus fine-grained ‘metric’ information in a test of short-term memory for spatial locations, either presented within a simple geometric surround (a circular enclosure) or within more visually complex landscape scenes. Patterns of displacement error in the point location estimates made by men and women were analyzed. Results confirmed a sex difference in the weighting of metric versus categorical cues. Relative to men, women's estimates of locations were more strongly biased toward the center of the surrounding category (i.e., toward the category ‘prototype’). Furthermore, objective measures of estradiol via saliva collected at the time of memory testing showed that, among naturally-cycling women, estradiol concentrations correlated in a positive, graded, fashion with the degree of emphasis that women placed on categorical information when estimating point locations. No associations were found for progesterone. These findings are consistent with a wider body of research showing that biological sex and reproductive hormone levels, including 17β-estradiol, can subtly influence performance on certain spatial tasks. This is the first study to show that circulating estradiol levels may influence the relative emphasis placed on categorical versus metric cues when remembering simple point locations.

最近的工作表明，性别差异可能存在于男性和女性在视觉环境中记住离散空间位置或路线的策略或线索类型中。目前的研究调查了女性循环雌二醇水平对空间位置短期记忆测试中分类与细粒度“度量”信息相对权重的影响，无论是在简单的几何环绕（圆形外壳）内呈现或者在视觉上更复杂的景观场景中。分析了男性和女性在点位置估计中的位移误差模式。结果证实了度量与分类线索的权重存在性别差异。相对于男性，女性 s 对位置的估计更偏向于周围类别的中心（即，朝向类别“原型”）。此外，在记忆测试时通过唾液收集的雌二醇的客观测量表明，在自然循环的女性中，雌二醇浓度与女性在估计点位置时对分类信息的重视程度呈正相关，分级方式。没有发现孕酮的关联。这些发现与更广泛的研究一致，表明生物性别和生殖激素水平，包括 17β-雌二醇，可以微妙地影响某些空间任务的表现。