Large Visuospatial Sex Difference in Line Judgment: Possible Role of Attentional Factors

Collaer, Marcia L.; Nelson, Joshua D.

doi:10.1006/brcg.2001.1321

Cited by 82 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In a previous experiment involving orchestral musicians, however, we found an age-related enhancement on Benton Judgment of Line Orientation (JOL) (Sluming et al, 2002) rather than the anticipated age-related decline found in nonmusicians. JOL is a relatively low-level visuospatial perceptual task (Collaer and Nelson, 2002) that is known to be partially subserved by similar neural networks supporting 3DMR (Barnes et al, 2000;Ng et al, 2001). We, therefore, also predicted agerelated enhancement in performing 3DMR by orchestral musicians.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians

Brooks²,

et al. 2007

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We provide neurobehavioral evidence supporting the transferable benefit of music training to alter brain function and enhance cognitive performance in a nonmusical visuospatial task in professional orchestral musicians. In particular, orchestral musicians' performance on a three-dimensional mental rotation (3DMR) task exhibited the behavioral profile normally only attained after significant practice, supporting the suggestion that these musicians already possessed well developed neural circuits to support 3DMR. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that only orchestral musicians showed significantly increased activation in Broca's area, in addition to the well known visuospatial network, which was activated in both musicians and nonmusicians who were matched on age, sex, and verbal intelligence. We interpret these functional neuroimaging findings to reflect preferential recruitment of Broca's area, part of the neural substrate supporting sight reading and motor-sequence organization underpinning musical performance, to subserve 3DMR in musicians. Our data, therefore, provide convergent behavioral and neurofunctional evidence supporting the suggestion that development of the sight-reading skills of musical performance alters brain circuit organization which, in turn, confers a wider cognitive benefit, in particular, to nonmusical visuospatial cognition in professional orchestral musicians.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians

Brooks²,

et al. 2007

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“…A similar increase in visuospatial abilities through late adolescence was shown using a variation of the simple pen and paper Design Organization Test (DOT: Burggraaf, Frens, Hooge, & van der Geest, 2015), which provides a faster and easier way for measuring visuospatial ability than the lengthy Block Design Test (Killgore, Glahn, & Casasanto, 2005;Killgore & Gogel, 2014). In recent years, a reason for differences in performance between the sexes has been suggested to be that men and women apply differential weighting to geometrical reference cues (Collaer & Nelson, 2002;Holden, Duff-Canning, & Hampson, 2015). However, these differences in visuospatial abilities by sex, have only been found in tasks involving mental rotation (Linn & Petersen, 1985;Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Performance on tasks of visuospatial memory and ability: A cross-sectional study in 330 adolescents aged 11 to 20

Burggraaf

Frens

Hooge

et al. 2017

Applied Neuropsychology: Child

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Cognitive functions mature at different points in time between birth and adulthood. Of these functions, visuospatial skills, such as spatial memory and part-to-whole organization, have often been tested in children and adults but have been less frequently evaluated during adolescence. We studied visuospatial memory and ability during this critical developmental period, as well as the correlation between these abilities, in a large group of 330 participants (aged 11 to 20 years, 55% male). To assess visuospatial memory, the participants were asked to memorize and reproduce sequences of random locations within a grid using a computer. Visuospatial ability was tested using a variation of the Design Organization Test (DOT). In this paper-and-pencil test, the participants had one minute to reproduce as many visual patterns as possible using a numerical code. On the memory task, compared with younger participants, older participants correctly reproduced more locations overall and longer sequences of locations, made fewer mistakes and needed less time to reproduce the sequences. In the visuospatial ability task, the number of correctly reproduced patterns increased with age. We show that both visuospatial memory and ability improve significantly throughout adolescence and that performance on both tasks is significantly correlated.

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“…Males outperform females in spatial tasks, such as the water level test where a tilted glass of water is presented, and the subject is required to judge where the water level would be if the glass were placed upright (Robert & Ohlmann, 1994), reflecting better processing of physical systems in males. Other examples are mental rotation (Geary, Gilger, & Elliott-Miller, 1992) and line-angle judgement (Collaer & Nelson, 2002). Females have been found to perform better in episodic memory tasks involving face recognition (Yonker, Eriksson, Nilsson, & Herlitz, 2003) and object recognition (McGivern et al, 1998).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in eye gaze and symbolic cueing of attention

Bayliss

Pellegrino

Tipper

2005

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A

283

257

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Observing a face with averted eyes results in a reflexive shift of attention to the gazed-at location. Here we present results that show that this effect is weaker in males than in females (Experiment 1). This result is predicted by the 'extreme male brain' theory of autism , which suggests that males in the normal population should display more autism-like traits than females (e.g., poor joint attention). Indeed, participants' scores on the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Stott, Bolton, & Goodyear, 2001) negatively correlated with cueing magnitude. Furthermore, exogenous orienting did not differ between the sexes in two peripheral cueing experiments (Experiments 2a and 2b). However, a final experiment showed that using nonpredictive arrows instead of eyes as a central cue also revealed a large gender difference. This demonstrates that reduced orienting from central cues in males generalizes beyond gaze cues. These results show that while peripheral cueing is equivalent in the male and female brains, the attention systems of the two sexes treat noninformative symbolic cues very differently.

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Large Visuospatial Sex Difference in Line Judgment: Possible Role of Attentional Factors

Cited by 82 publications

References 22 publications

Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians

Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians

Performance on tasks of visuospatial memory and ability: A cross-sectional study in 330 adolescents aged 11 to 20

Sex differences in eye gaze and symbolic cueing of attention

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