Experiential Factors in Sex Differences on Mental Rotation (original) (raw)

2003, Perceptual and Motor Skills

Past research has shown that men score significantly higher than women on mental rotation tests. The present study examined the effects of a prior exposure to a mental rotation task, i.e., adapted Cube Comparison test, and to chreedimensional objects, i.e., LegosTM, on the performance on the Mental Rotation Test. 113 men and women were randomly divided into three conditions: control, exposure, or detailed instructions. On average, men outperformed women. Further analyses showed that sex differences were significant in the control condition but not in the other two, suggesting that a cuing effect may explain some of the robust sex differences in visuospatial tasks. Mental rotation capabilities vary from one individual to another. There are controversies about the way the research is conducted, the interpretation of the findings, and the theoretical and practical significance of the results. One of the most widely used tasks to assess mental rotation ability is Vandenberg and Kuse's Mental Rotation Test (1978), which is based on Shepard and Metzler's stimuli (1971). A considerable number of studies have shown that men outperform women on this task, indicating that men have a greater proficiency in the rotation of mental images (e.g., Campos & Cofan, 1986; Geary, Gilger, & Elliott-Miller, 1992; Masters, 1998). Although the task has been reported to yield some of the largest and most reliable sex differences in performance of all spatial tests (e.g.,