Differences In Visual Spatial Ability Essay Research

Differences In Visual Spatial Ability Essay, Research Paper

Differences in Visual Spatial 1

Running head: The differences in visual spatial ability among females and males

The differences in visual spatial ability among females and males:

Does practice have an effect on performance.

Scott D. Singleton

Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire

Differences in Visual Spatial 2

Abstract

Many scientists have studied the sex differences in spatial abilities. Different designs of testing have been used to test this subject. A simple Mental Rotation Test (MRT) was designed to test the spatial abilities of males verse females in identifying rotated objects. The test consisted of two trials to measure whether practice had an effect on performance. Nine males and 30 females participated in the spatial rotation test. Regardless of trials males perform significantly higher in spatial rotation tasks then females. The effect of trials had a positive effect on females and no effect on males. Female’s scores increased after the first trial. Where as male’s scores stayed consistent from trial one and trial two. The results suggest that male’s complete spatial visualization task more accurately then females, although female’s accuracy improves with practice.

Differences in Visual Spatial 3

The differences in visual spatial ability among females and males

Does Practice have an effect on performance

Throughout the past few decades Scientists have been studying spatial visualization among males and females. In many cases, males score significantly higher in this area and in others reports show no significant difference between males and females scores but do report that scores were higher in a specific gender. One of these studies is Schaefer and Thomas’s (1998) study on spatial tasks and sex differences in gains from practice, tested college students on recognition of a rotated figure embedded in pictures. Although Schaefer and Thomas’s (1998) results do not show a significant difference for females verse males, figures showed males scored higher numbers during testing.

Studies have been done using different difficulty levels of spatial rotation testing and have come up with statistics supporting males’ abilities being higher then females. Goldstein, Haldane, and Mitchell (1990) studied the difference of visual spatial ability between male and female math students using the Mental Rotation test. They ran two studies, one with timed and untimed testing, and one with a group of individuals that scored highly in quantitative problem solving. Within the group of individuals that had high quantitative problem solving skills the males scored significantly higher in visual spatial recognition. Within the second test group involving time an untimed testing, males scored significantly higher then females in the timed testing section. There was no difference found in visual spatial ability between males and females during the untimed testing (Goldstein, Haldane, Mitchell 1990).

Differences in Visual Spatial 4

Studies comparing the gender and visual spatial recognition along with different fields of study; Peters, Laeng, Jackson, Zaiyouna, and Richardson (1995) conducted a spatial visualization test using a duplicated version of Vandenberg and Kuse’s (1978), MRT test and several different groups. In one test they compared male’s performance to female’s performance between students from the humanities field to those from the social sciences field. This study showed that males perform spatial rotational task significantly better then females in both areas of study. In the study both males from the humanities program and those from the social sciences program had significantly higher scores than the females from those departments. Their results were similar to those of Goldstein, Haldane, and Mitchell’s (1990) findings with the males verse females in the spatial visualization tasks (Peters, Laeng, Jackson, Zaiyouna, and Richardson 1995).

Delgado and Prieto (1996) ran a 2×2 (gender and time) spatial visualization test. Using male and female high school seniors. To measure their spatial visualization abilities, “Two Psychometric test were selected from Eliot and Smith’s (1983) directory: The RFM test (Yela 1968), which is the Spanish adaptation of the Rotation of Solid Figures developed by Thurstone and Thurstone (1949) a 3-D mental rotation test, loading in the factor of spatial relations”, as cited in (Delgado and Prieto 1996 p.506).

The experiment I ran is closely related to Vandenberg and Kuse’s study done in 1978. Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) studied spatial visualization ability among females and males in three different age groups, University students, high school students and

Differences in Visual Spatial 5

elementary school students. They measured this using a paper and pencil test of spatial visualization that was constructed from two dimensional drawings of three dimensional figures which were taken from the chronometric study of Shepard and Metzler (1971) as cited in (Vandenberg and Kuse 1978). A consistent sex difference over the entire range of ages was found and the visual spatial ability was found to be significantly higher in males over females for all three age groups. (Vandenberg and Kuse 1978).

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