differenceblog, posts by tag: cognitive tasks - LiveJournal

EDIT: Sorry for the double post today. LJ was twitchy this morning
Alexander and Evardone (2008) found that sex differences in performance on a mental rotation task (MRT) could be cut in half by using human figures instead of the traditional block figures. Both men's and women's performance on the MRT was improved by using a human figure, but the improvement to women's performance showed a much stronger effect. The sex of the human figure also seemed to play a role - men's performance with rotated female figures was similar to their performance with blocks, while women showed improvement on both male and female human figure stimuli.

Men still showed a statistically significant advantage with the human figure stimuli. Finger-length ratios (assumed to be indicators of androgen activity) were associated with total correct rotations in men, and with percentage correct rotations in women. The Pre-School Activities Inventory (PSAI, Golombok & Rust, 1993) (a recollection of gendered types of play engaged in as a child) did not show any associations with success in the MRT, or with finger length ratios. The strongest predictor of performance on the MRT was performance on the Extended Range Vocabulary Test - "a control measure of general cognitive ability that does not show a sex difference."

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The theoretical framework proposed by Alexander and Evardone is that childhood play affects spatial sense:

"we reasoned that male-typical play may enhance the mental rotation of replicas of inanimate objects such as vehicles and blocks, whereas female-typical toy play, such as dressing dolls, may enhance the mental rotation of animate forms or body parts."

The results from the PSAI do not seem to support this: participation in masculine-specific play didn't seem to correlate with better spatial rotation. The figure-gender difference makes me wonder if the participants were picturing themselves as the figures, and that perhaps the male participants did not picture themselves as the female figures.

Judy Skatssoon (6/4/2007), writing for news.com.au, says that the University of Warwick has "dealt heterosexual women a final indignity." Skatssoon is referring to research by Michael Tlauka that found differences in mental rotation ability, with straight men scoring the highest while straight women scored the lowest. However, although the news articles attribute this work to Tlauka, the paper published in April's Archives of Sexual Behavior was published by Maylor et al (2007).

Tlauka et al (2005) tested men and women with paper and computer maps in a virtual store, and found that men required less time and made fewer mistakes than their female counterparts. Martin et al's 2007 review of the effect of testosterone and estrogen finds that gender differences in spatial ability are "large and robust."

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Mental rotation tasks (MRT) are probably one of my favorite topics because they really do seem to consistently break down by gender. The fact that Maylor et al found that ability appeared to vary by sexuality (determined by self-identification, on an internet survey) continues to tie sexuality and gender together in a way that I politically deny and inwardly fear may be true. Research that classifies by sexuality often seems to suggest that lesbians are more "manly" and gay men more "womanly" than their straight counterparts. I don't know what to make of it, but it feels to me as if they are asking the wrong questions.

CNN Health reported yesterday on Nichol et al's (2007) findings that women display different symptoms of alcohol dependence than do men. Men are more likely to report binge drinking and aggression, while women are more likely to report guilt and depression over their drinking. Nichols suggests that this difference may be causing many women to go undiagnosed, and explain some of the gender disparity in alcoholism diagnosis.

In the same issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, Flannery et al (2007) report that women suffer greater cognitive impairment from alcohol abuse than men (see Reuters for summary). However, this study did not report any gender-wise control-vs-control or alcohol-vs-alcohol comparisons. The tests were on "motor speed, visuoperceptual processing, visuospatial processing, decision making, and cognitive flexibility." Some of these tasks have well documented gender differences without alcoholism, but if this was controlled for, it was not reported.

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Someone asked me recently if I worried that I would run out of topics for Difference Blog. I don't see how that would be possible, when new research is constantly being generated. Yes, I've talked about alcohol before, but when I can find two pertinent articles in a single issue of a single journal -- I could never write fast enough to cover everything.

The thing that really strikes me about these two articles is that one of them seems to be saying that differences in alcoholism prevalence between men and women are not as high as we thought, and the other is saying that differences in alcoholism impact are higher than we thought. I'm more skeptical of Flannery's conclusions than Nichol's, but then again, Nichol's conclusions are less concrete.

Cognitive/Balance tasks for adults do not seem to show a consistent gender effect. While studying the effects of cognitive processing on balance and posture, Kerr et al (1985) found that "men swayed left-right more than women" while balancing, but in general, did not find that memory tasks influenced balance in one gender preferentially. Barra et al (2006) found that number of falls increased during tasks with greater cognitive load for both sexes.

The Movement Assessment Battery for Children has often been used as a diagnostic tool. In the development of norms for the M-ABC, it was generally found that boys did better on ball skills while girls did better on balance skills. However, results from Miyahara et al (1998) suggest the norms for this test are not cross-culturally consistent.

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Much like today's studies, I can't say I've really noticed a pattern in clumsiness in men or women. I also haven't noticed men or women talking about their clumsiness more, but women seem to discuss it more loudly, and more apologetically. I think women may expect themselves to be more graceful, whereas men don't measure themselves on that factor as often.