Sex differences in spatial ability and spatial activities

Explanations of sex-related differences in spatial ability emphasizing the role of sex-differentiated experience have not been supported by direct measurement of spatial activities during adolescence, the period when these differences seem to increase. The present research involved development of a scale to measure the spatial experience of adolescents and adults. In Study 1, a list, as complete as possible of adolescent activities was compiled and given to undergraduate judges for ratings of involvement of spatial skills and sex-typing. Judges also indicated whether they had participated in each activity. Activities considered spatial by 75% or more of the judges were used to develop a spatial experience questionnaire. Judgments of the spatial nature of tasks were positively correlated with judged masculinity and with greater male than female participation. In Study 2, participation in spatial activities by undergraduates was correlated with spatial ability as measured by the Differential Aptitude Test. The activity questionnaire should prove useful in studying the development of spatial ability in adolescents and adults.     

Neurobiological and endocrine correlates of individual differences in spatial learning ability

The polysialylated neural cell adhesion molecule (PSA-NCAM) has been implicated in activity-dependent synaptic remodeling and memory formation. Here, we questioned whether training-induced modulation of PSA-NCAM expression might be related to individual differences in spatial learning abilities. At 12 h posttraining, immunohistochemical analyses revealed a learning-induced up-regulation of PSA-NCAM in the hippocampal dentate gyrus that was related to the spatial learning abilities displayed by rats during training. Specifically, a positive correlation was found between latency to find the platform and subsequent activated PSA levels, indicating that greater induction of polysialylation was observed in rats with the slower acquisition curve. At posttraining times when no learning-associated activation of PSA was observed, no such correlation was found. Further experiments revealed that performance in the massed water maze training is related to a pattern of spatial learning and memory abilities, and to learning-related glucocorticoid responsiveness. Taken together, our findings suggest that the learning-related neural circuits of fast learners are better suited to solving the water maze task than those of slow learners, the latter relying more on structural reorganization to form memory, rather than the relatively economic mechanism of altering synaptic efficacy that is likely used by the former.     

Sex differences in spatial ability: a lateralization of function approach

The current study was designed to examine whether the extent of the male advantage in performance on a spatial task was determined by the extent to which the task was right-hemisphere dependent. Participants included 108 right-handed men and women who completed the mental rotation, waterlevel, and paperfolding tasks, all of which were presented bilaterally. The results partially supported the hypothesis. On the mental rotation task, men showed a right-hemisphere advantage, whereas women showed no hemispheric differences; however, no overall sex differences were observed. On the waterlevel task, men outperformed women, and both men and women showed a right-hemisphere advantage. On the paperfolding task, no sex or hemispheric differences were observed. Although the findings of the current study were mixed, the study provides a framework for examining sex differences across different types of spatial ability.     

Sex differences in personality and expectancy

It has been shown that women have a lower expectancy than men before examinations, without there being any differences in past performance levels or in work spent in exam preparations. It was proposed that these sex differences in expectancy could be understood as an expression of differences in instrumental/expressive personality dispositions. In a group of undergraduate psychology students tested a short time before examination, scores on a composite index called “Strong” were found to account for a significant but small amount of variance in expectancy estimates. The relationship between expectancy and Strong was also found to depend on the level of another composite index called “Warm.” A fairly high correlation between expectancy and Strong was thus found for Ss describing themselves as warm. For Ss describing themselves as not very warm, no relationship between expectancy and Strong was found. When differences in personality traits were controlled, however, women were still found to have a lower expectancy than men. Expectancy was found to be a more accurate predictor of actual grades for Ss with high scores on instrumental traits than for Ss with low scores.     

Sex and personality differences in occupational interests

Females differed significantly compared to males along several interest dimensions—they displayed less interest in technical trades and technical-scientific occupations, and were more inclined to select design-oriented and social-educational occupations. High trait neurotics were inclined to choose social-educational interests—as did extraverts. Extraversion was negatively correlated with the higher order ‘task-related’ interest factor, and positively correlated with ‘person- and nature-related’ interests (factor III). Psychoticism was negatively correlated with interest in commercial and administrative jobs (both loaded on the ‘task related’ factor). Ss characterized as dissimulants (L+) showed a greater affinity towards nutritional trades and administrative organisations.     

Sex differences in dynamic spatial ability: The unsolved question of performance factors

Males and females differ in several cognitive abilities, although the largest gap can be found in spatial ability. Some published studies make the claim that performance factors, which can be either subject- or task-related variables, explain these differences. However, previous studies in which performance factors were measured have focused on static spatial tests. Little is known about the role of performance factors in dynamic spatial tasks. In the present study, we analyzed a sample of 2624 university graduates to test the role of three performance factors (response latency, response frequency, and invested time) derived from the Spatial Orientation Dynamic Test-Revised (SODT-R; Santacreu, 1999). The results showed that males and females appear to cope with the dynamic task in different ways. However, males outperformed females even when the effects of the performance factors were partialed out; that is, the assessed performance factors did not explain much of the sex-related variance. Alternative ways of measuring performance factors will be needed if they are to explain sex differences in dynamic spatial ability.     

Sex differences in impulsivity and intellectual ability

Literature on sex differences in impulsivity has tended to focus on differences between groups, while ignoring relationships beyond zero order correlations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate Maccoby's hypothesis (1966) of opposite-direction correlations where the relationship between a set of variables (e.g., impulsivity and intellectual ability) is curvilinear, with males and females being systematically distributed on opposite sides of the curve. The Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) and Matching Familiar Figures tests were administered to 44 males and 49 females. The relationship between all of the PMA subtests and impulsivity was curvilinear for males, but linear for females on all but one of the subtests. The importance and implications of examining distribution differences rather than group differences are discussed.Support for this study has come from the Office of Research Administration, University of Kansas, Grant Number 3581-5038. This paper was presented in part at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, August 1975, Division 7.     

Searching for correlates of spatial ability

A brief questionnaire about sense of direction and mechanical experience correlated with Mental Rotation scores. Several new, experimental measures thought to be related to spatial ability did not in fact correlate with Mental Rotation scores.     

Sex differences and personality factors in responsivity to pain

This study investigated the relationship between measured levels of masculinity-femininity, social desirability, and responsivity to pain in men and women. The literature suggests that the two personality variables might provide an explanation for the common findings of higher pain thresholds and tolerances in men than in women. A significant interaction was found between masculinity-femininity and sex for pain thresholds. Analysis of this interaction indicated that for men, but not women, there was a significant correlation between masculinity-femininity and pain, where higher masculinity was associated with higher pain thresholds. However, this finding did not account for the sex difference in pain threshold. The sex of the subject remained a significant predictor of both pain thresholds and tolerances after allowing for the influence of masculinity-femininity, social desirability, and their associated interactions.     

Functional and dysfunctional impulsivity: personality and cognitive correlates

The 3 studies reported here were designed to clarify the nature of the personality trait of impulsivity. Two types of impulsivity were distinguished. Dysfunctional impulsivity is the tendency to act with less forethought than most people of equal ability when this tendency is a source of difficulty; most previous work on impulsivity appears to have focused on this trait. Functional impulsivity, in contrast, is the tendency to act with relatively little forethought when such a style is optimal. The present work indicates that these two tendencies are not highly correlated and that they bear different relations both to other personality traits and to the manner in which certain basic cognitive processes are executed.     

Sex differences on the five personality factors in Spanish students

This study examined sex differences in the Big Five Personality factors in a sample of 255 Spanish university students (196 women and 59 men) whose mean age was 21.4 yr. (SD=3.91). They responded to the short Spanish version of the Big Five Personality scale. The goals of this study were first, to check the utility of this scale to evaluate personality traits in the Spanish university population, and, second, to check the sensitivity of this shorter scale in evaluating possible differences between sexes on these factors of personality. Analysis supported the published factorial structure, and significant differences were found between men and women on the factors of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness.     

Sex differences in spatial ability reflected in performance on IQ subtests by black or white examinees

Sex differences in spatial ability were investigated using scores on the performance subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. The sample consisted of 832 adolescents, evenly divided by race (black or white) and sex. Within both racial groups, males outscored females on all of the spatially-oriented subtests, but females outscored males on a subtest emphasizing rote memory. The similarity of patterning of sex differences within each racial group might be interpreted as indicating that something more than social experience alone is involved in this phenomenon.     

Memory and age differences in spatial manipulation ability

Young and old adults were asked, in 3 experiments, to make decisions about the identity of line segment patterns after either adding or subtracting line segments from the original pattern. On some of the trials, the line segments from the initial display were presented again in the second display to minimize the necessity of remembering early information during the processing of later information. Although this manipulation presumably reduced the importance of memory in the tasks, it had little effect on the magnitude of the age differences in any of the experiments. Because the 2 groups were equivalent in accuracy of simple recognition judgments, but older adults were less accurate when the same types of decisions were required in the context of an ongoing task, the results suggested that older adults may be impaired in the ability to retain information while simultaneously processing the same or other information.     

Delay discounting: Interactions between personality and cognitive ability

Delay discounting describes the extent to which the value of a reward decreases as the delay to obtaining that reward increases. Lower discounting rates predict better outcomes in social, academic, and health domains. The current study investigates how personality and cognitive ability interact to predict individual differences in delay discounting. Extraversion was found to predict higher discounting rates at the low end of the cognitive distribution, while emotional stability was found to predict lower discounting rates at the high end of the cognitive distribution. These findings support recent models of discounting behavior and suggest that personality and cognitive ability interact in shaping decision making.     

The locus of sex differences in spatial ability

College men and women judged whether pairs of stimuli were identical or mirror images. One stimulus of a pair was presented upright; the other was rotated 0°–150° from the vertical. The stimuli were either alphanumeric symbols or unfamiliar letter-like characters of the type found on the Primary Mental Abilities Spatial Relations Test. For each individual, the linear function relating response latency to degree of rotation was computed. The slope of this function was steeper for women than for men. Further, the distribution of slopes was more variable among women, with approximately 30% falling outside the range of distribution for men. Women and men were quite similar in the accuracy of their judgments, the intercepts of the latency functions, and the precision with which the linear function characterized the latency data. It is suggested that the sex difference in the slope of the rotation function may reflect differences in strategies of mental rotation.     

Sex differences in facial emotion perception ability across the lifespan

Perception of emotion in the face is a key component of human social cognition and is considered vital for many domains of life; however, little is known about how this ability differs across the lifespan for men and women. We addressed this question with a large community sample (N?=?100,257) of persons ranging from younger than 15 to older than 60 years of age. Participants were viewers of the television show “Tout le Monde Joue”, and the task was presented on television, with participants responding via their mobile devices. Applying latent variable modeling, and establishing measurement invariance between males and females and across age, we found that, for both males and females, emotion perception abilities peak between the ages of 15 and 30, with poorer performance by younger adults and declining performance after the age of 30. In addition, we show a consistent advantage by females across the lifespan, which decreases in magnitude with increasing age. This large scale study with a wide range of people and testing environments suggests these effects are largely robust. Implications are discussed.