Steven Gaulin: UCSB Department of Anthropology

Though Silverman and Eals division-of-foraging-labor hypothesis cannot explain the cross-species distribution of sex differences in spatial ability, it does make a novel prediction: women will more accurately remember the location of stationary resources. Unfortunately, Silverman and Eals’ own tests of this hypothesis have yielded weak and inconsistent support, possibly because the tasks used to assess the hypothesized female advantage lack ecological validity. I will present results of a controlled field study carried out at a large farmers market. Women performed significantly better than men at remembering the location of food items they had tasted, but not at remembering the location of non-food landmarks. In addition, accuracy was significantly correlated with the caloric content of food items, suggesting specialization of this particular cognitive system.