Gender and Task in the Determination of Spatial Cognitive Performance

Abstract

A variety of sex differences in spatial cognitive performance have been documented. However, factors other than those specifically related to gender and cognition per se, such as the perceived spatial character of given tasks, may contribute to such differences. In the present experiments, spatial memory and mental image rotation tasks were presented to female and male adults. The task formats or instructions were varied to emphasize or deemphasize the spatial character of the tasks. Highly “spatial” instructions or format significantly depressed performance on spatial tasks for women but not for men. “Nonspatial” instructions or format, within which the spatial character of the task was not explicit, resulted in no significant differences between the performances of women and men on either type of task. These findings indicate that instructional or format effects relating to the purported “spatial” character of a given task may significantly influence the relative performance of women and men.

Eyewitness Memory in Context: Toward a Taxonomy of Eyewitness Error

“…It is obviously important not to overinterpret negative or null findings such as these. However, it should be noted that we could find no evidence, at least within the current research framework, that sex differences in cognition and affect, much discussed in the popular literature but frequently explained by effects other than those directly resulting from gender (e.g., Sharps et al 1993;Sharps et al 1994) have any real bearing on the types of errors addressed here.…”

Stereotype susceptibility narrows the gender gap in imagined self-rotation performance

“…Previous attempts at altering mental rotation performance through experiential factors have been problematic (for reviews, see Casey, 1996;Masters, 1998). For example, Sharps and colleagues found that gender differences on a mental rotation task diminished when the researchers eliminated mention of the spatial connotations of the task from the instruction set (Sharps, Price, & Williams, 1994;Sharps, Welton, & Price, 1993), and when they altered the task instructions to emphasize cognitive skills involved in stereotypical feminine versus masculine occupations (Sharps et al, 1994). Although promising, these results are difficult to interpret because the experimenters did not include control conditions.…”

Body Image Preference in the United States and Rural Thailand: An Exploratory Study

“…The northeastern provinces of Thailand, Nong Khai and Udon, provide an ideal context for the examination of this issue. Gender-sensitive issues are especially prone to the effects of social influence (e.g., Sharps, Price, &Williams, 1994;Sharps, Welton, & Price, 1993). In the United States, women have been more influenced by the trend toward Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 14:00 18 November 2014 520 The Journal of Psychology extremely slender physiques than have men; U.S. women's preference for a slender body type has been shown to be stronger than that of U.S. men, and U.S. women also believe the body type preferred by men to be significantly more slender than is in fact the case (e.g., Fallon & Rozin, 1985).…”