Coutrot, A, Silva, R, Manley, E orcid.org/0000-0002-8904-0513 et al. (8 more authors) (2018) Global Determinants of Navigation Ability. Current Biology, 28 (17). pp. 2861-2866. ISSN 0960-9822
Abstract
Human spatial ability is modulated by a number of factors, including age [1-3] and gender [4, 5]. Although a few studies showed that culture influences cognitive strategies [6-13], the interaction between these factors has never been globally assessed as this requires testing millions of people of all ages across many different countries in the world. Since countries vary in their geographical and cultural properties, we predicted that these variations give rise to an organized spatial distribution of cognition at a planetary-wide scale. To test this hypothesis, we developed a mobile-app-based cognitive task, measuring non-verbal spatial navigation ability in more than 2.5 million people and sampling populations in every nation state. We focused on spatial navigation due to its universal requirement across cultures. Using a clustering approach, we find that navigation ability is clustered into five distinct, yet geographically related, groups of countries. Specifically, the economic wealth of a nation was predictive of the average navigation ability of its inhabitants, and gender inequality was predictive of the size of performance difference between males and females. Thus, cognitive abilities, at least for spatial navigation, are clustered according to economic wealth and gender inequalities globally, which has significant implications for cross-cultural studies and multi-center clinical trials using cognitive testing.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Keywords: | spatial cognition; cross-country analysis; crowdsourcing; gender differences; aging |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Centre for Spatial Analysis & Policy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Dec 2019 15:58 |
Last Modified: | 12 Nov 2020 09:39 |
Published Version: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30100340 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.009 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:154481 |