Bodies and occlusion: Item types, cognitive processes, and gender differences in mental rotation

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randi A. Doyle ◽  
Daniel Voyer

Scientific literature highlighted gender differences in spatial orientation. In particular, men and women differ in terms of the navigational processes they use in daily life. Scientific literature highlighted that women use analytical strategies while men tend to use holistic strategies. According to classical studies, males show a net advantage at least in the two categories of mental rotation and spatial perception. Subsequently, brain-imaging studies have shown a difference between males and females in the activity of brain regions involved in spatial cognition tasks. What we can say with certainty is that, given the complex nature of the subprocesses involved in what we call spatial cognition, the gender differences recorded by numerous scientific studies conducted in this field are closely related to specific measured abilities. The evidence that emerges with certainty from diverse studies is, however, that of a huge variety of strategies that differ according to sex, context, purpose to reach, education, age, and profession. In the study presented here, the gender and age-related tests show a significant sex-based difference perspective-taking tasks, but there is no gender-based difference in the mental rotation task.


2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (8) ◽  
pp. 1530-1544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randi A. Doyle ◽  
Daniel Voyer ◽  
Maryani Lesmana

1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Uecker ◽  
J.E. Obrzut

2008 ◽  
Vol 189 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peka S. Christova ◽  
Scott M. Lewis ◽  
Georgios A. Tagaris ◽  
Kâmil Uğurbil ◽  
Apostolos P. Georgopoulos

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1822) ◽  
pp. 20200141
Author(s):  
Tamar Saguy ◽  
Michal Reifen-Tagar ◽  
Daphna Joel

Gender inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. A core factor that feeds gender inequality is people's gender ideology—a set of beliefs about the proper order of society in terms of the roles women and men should fill. We argue that gender ideology is shaped, in large parts, by the way people make sense of gender differences. Specifically, people often think of gender differences as expressions of a predetermined biology, and of men and women as different ‘kinds’. We describe work suggesting that thinking of gender differences in this biological-essentialist way perpetuates a non-egalitarian gender ideology. We then review research that refutes the hypothesis that men and women are different ‘kinds’ in terms of brain function, hormone levels and personality characteristics. Next, we describe how the organization of the environment in a gender-binary manner, together with cognitive processes of categorization drive a biological-essentialist view of gender differences. We then describe the self-perpetuating relations, which we term the gender-binary cycle , between a biological-essentialist view of gender differences, a non-egalitarian gender ideology and a binary organization of the environment along gender lines. Finally, we consider means of intervention at different points in this cycle. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (11) ◽  
pp. 2411-2420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randi A Doyle ◽  
Daniel Voyer

The goal of the current study was to provide a better understanding of the role of image familiarity, embodied cognition, and cognitive strategies on sex differences in performance when rotating blocks and photographs of real human bodies. Two new Mental Rotation Tests (MRTs) were created: one using photographs of real human models positioned as closely as possible to computer drawn figures from the human figures MRT used in Doyle and Voyer’s 2013 study, and one using analogous block figures. It was hypothesised that, when compared to the analogous block figures, the real human figures would lead to improved accuracy among both men and women, a reduced magnitude of sex differences in accuracy, and a reduced effect of occlusion on women’s performance when compared to analogous block figures. The three-way interaction between test, sex, and occlusion reported in Doyle and Voyer’s 2013 study was not replicated in the current study. However, women’s scores on the real human figures improved significantly more than men’s scores on the real human figures test compared to gender differences in improvement on the block figures test. This finding points to a greater strategy shift among women than men when rotating human figures.


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