Gender differences in visuo-spatial abilities Males perform better than females in visuo-spatial tasks:

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-52
Author(s):  
Ryzal Perdana ◽  
◽  
◽  

Abstract Critical and creative thinking skills are an essential attribute for success in the 21st century. This study aimed to determine the students’ critical and creative thinking skills in the Islamic senior high schools of Surakarta City so that teachers can pay attention to the strength and weakness of each student based on gender differences. This study used descriptive qualitative analysis. The subject of this study amounted to 180 students consisting of 80 male and 100 female students. The measurement of critical-thinking skills used a 6-essay-question instrument of the chemical material of electrolyte and non-electrolyte solutions that measures the aspects based on Facione theory, namely: analysis, inference, explanation, interpretation, evaluation, and self-regulation. Then, to measure creative-thinking skills, a 4-essay-question test instrument of the chemical material that includes 4 aspects according to Torrance, fluency, flexibility, original and elaboration, was used. The results showed that the creative-thinking skills of male students are better than those of female students and the critical-thinking skills of female students are better than those of male students.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 681
Author(s):  
Alessia Bocchi ◽  
Massimiliano Palmiero ◽  
Jose Manuel Cimadevilla Redondo ◽  
Laura Tascón ◽  
Raffaella Nori ◽  
...  

Individual factors like gender and familiarity can affect the kind of environmental representation that a person acquires during spatial navigation. Men seem to prefer relying on map-like survey representations, while women prefer using sequential route representations. Moreover, a good familiarity with the environment allows more complete environmental representations. This study was aimed at investigating gender differences in two different object-position learning tasks (i.e., Almeria Boxes Tasks) assuming a route or a survey perspective also considering the role of environmental familiarity. Two groups of participants had to learn the position of boxes placed in a virtual room. Participants had several trials, so that familiarity with the environment could increase. In both tasks, the effects of gender and familiarity were found, and only in the route perspective did an interaction effect emerge. This suggests that gender differences can be found regardless of the perspective taken, with men outperforming women in navigational tasks. However, in the route task, gender differences appeared only at the initial phase of learning, when the environment was unexplored, and disappeared when familiarity with the environment increased. This is consistent with studies showing that familiarity can mitigate gender differences in spatial tasks, especially in more complex ones.


Genus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Priulla ◽  
Nicoletta D’Angelo ◽  
Massimo Attanasio

AbstractThis paper investigates gender differences in university performances in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses in Italy, proposing a novel application through the segmented regression models. The analysis concerns freshmen students enrolled at a 3-year STEM degree in Italian universities in the last decade, with a focus on the relationship between the number of university credits earned during the first year (a good predictor of the regularity of the career) and the probability of getting the bachelor degree within 4 years. Data is provided by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR). Our analysis confirms that first-year performance is strongly correlated to obtaining a degree within 4 years. Furthermore, our findings show that gender differences vary among STEM courses, in accordance with the care-oriented and technical-oriented dichotomy. Males outperform females in mathematics, physics, chemistry and computer science, while females are slightly better than males in biology. In engineering, female performance seems to follow the male stream. Finally, accounting for other important covariates regarding students, we point out the importance of high school background and students’ demographic characteristics.


1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis P. Saccuzzo ◽  
A.Scott Craig ◽  
Nancy E. Johnson ◽  
Gerald E. Larson

2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang

This article attempts to understand the unique gender ratio in Chinese suicide from a physiological perspective. While Chinese women have been performing notably better than Chinese men in international sport competitions, it is suggested that sport achievements and suicide risks are both related to masculinity and aggression. To test the hypothesis that the gender difference in Chinese sports records is smaller than that found in U.S. sports records, both Chinese and U.S. national athletic records were analyzed for field, track, and swimming events. With the hypothesis supported by the data, the findings suggest a new explanation for the high suicide rate by Chinese women and low suicide rate by Chinese men. Future research is needed on physical, psychological, and biological factors that may be associated with gender differences in Chinese suicides.


Author(s):  
Alessia Bocchi ◽  
Massimiliano Palmiero ◽  
Laura Piccardi

AbstractGender differences are often reported in spatial abilities, most of the times favouring men. Even during wayfinding, which requires planning and decision-making, such as choosing roads to take or shortcuts, men are in general better and faster than women. Although different interpretations have been proposed to explain men’s advantage in navigation, no study has explored the possibility that it could be due to men’s better travel planning ability. This latter has been recently identified as a distinct kind of planning that allows implementing an efficient navigational strategy in accordance with the environmental features. Therefore, the present study was aimed at investigating gender differences in travel planning ability. We compared men and women in performing the Key Search Task that requires to implement a strategy to search for a lost object in a wide imagined space. Results showed that men outperform women in both the overall performance and in some specific indexes of the total score. Men had a better travel planning ability with respect to women, outperforming women in configuring the planned strategy and choosing the best point to enter the imagined field. Therefore, men seem to plan the best navigational strategy and appear more cognitively flexible than women in adapting the strategy at the environmental features. The two genders did not differ in the time spent to solve the task. This finding suggests that differences in travel planning skills can contribute in explaining gender differences in wayfinding and spatial orientation.


Author(s):  
Judith Jiménez Díaz ◽  
Walter Salazar Rojas ◽  
María Morera

Fundamental motor skills are the basis for participation in more advanced lifetime activities. Whereas considerable research has been reported on motor behavior of children, much less is known about performance in later years, especially adulthood. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine age and gender differences on fundamental motor skills (FMS) ability across three age groups: children (M = 9.37 yr., SD = 1.26), adolescents (M = 14.80 yr., SD = 2.04) and young-adults (M = 19.88 yr., SD = 2.72). Participants (n = 114) were assessed on five locomotor skills (run, gallop, slide, hop, and distance jump) and five object control skills (bounce, catch, overhand throw, strike and kick) using the Test for Fundamental Motor Skills, which is a process-oriented instrument. ANOVA results comparing gender and group revealed no significant interactions. Moreover, main effects for group were found for three individual skills: galloping –adolescents and young-adults performed better than children (p < .01)–, throwing –children and adolescents performed better than young-adults (p < .01) –, and kicking –young-adults performed better than children and adolescents (p < .05)–. Also, we found main effects for gender for total FMS ability (p < .01), locomotor subscale (p < .05) and object control subscale (p < .01), and for six individual motor skills: run (p < .05), jump (p < .05), throw (p < .01), kick (p < .01), bounce (p < .01) and strike (p < .01); males outperformed females for all the skills. However, in view of total FMS ability, locomotor skills and object control skills results suggest similar performance across ages. Therefore, it is important to enhance fundamental motor skills at all ages, as an option to help individuals engage in physical activities.


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