Gender Differences In Spatial Ability

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Title An Investigation of Gender Differences in Spatial Ability Abstract Researches and studies have documented a significant gender difference in spatial abilities. Unanimously, all analysis of data revealed that men were more accurate than women, both in speed and accuracy. Ten male and ten female participants performed tests of three-dimensional mental rotation and spatial visualization. There were two parts in this test, each testing them on their response time and accuracy. Each participant was given three minutes for each part. Table 1 shows the mean for the accuracy in both genders. Our results indicated that males were more accurate than women and the direct effect of gender on spatial ability, thus making the hypothesis true. Introduction Gender difference in spatial ability has an evolutionary basis according to the Hunter‐gatherer theory which claims that male superiority in spatial tasks originates from large scale hunting activities that males were involved in historically (Hooven, C.K., Chabris, C.F., Ellison, P.T., Kievit, R.A., & Kosslyn, S.M., n.d.). During the prehistoric days, women tended not to venture far from home and therefore, unlike the men, did not gain much experience in navigating their way around unfamiliar territories. A study by Tapley and Bryden (1977) has shown that men performed more accurately on spatial ability tests involving rotated real three‐dimensional objects. Goldberg and Meredith (1975, as cited in Tapley & Bryden, 1977) tested paper‐and‐pencil version of Metzler and Shepard’s (1974) mental rotation task on primary school children and found large gender differences. However, the paper‐and‐pencil test has not been used to test for gender differences in adults. The present study attempts to test if adult males showed superiority in paper‐and‐pencil mental rotation tests. The experimental hypothesis is males
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