Mental-rotation performance in middle and high-school age: influence of stimulus material, gender stereotype beliefs, and perceived ability of gendered activities

Can (perceived) mental-rotation performance mediate gender differences in math anxiety in adolescents and young adults?

“…(1) In line with the literature, we predicted males to outperform females in mental rotation (Voyer et al, 1995) and older participants to perform better than younger children (Rahe & Quaiser-Pohl, 2019). Gender differences should be more pronounced in the older than the younger age group (Voyer et al, 1995).…”

“…In mental-rotation tasks with 11-to 19-year-old participants, older adolescents outperformed younger adolescents in accuracy and reaction time (Kail, 1985). Analyzing age and gender effects in the same age group, Rahe and Quaiser-Pohl (2019) found no effect of age in general but a significant interaction of age group and gender indicating that only boys but not girls' accuracy in a mental-rotation task improved during adolescence. This is in line with increasing gender differences from adolescence to adulthood (Voyer et al, 1995).…”

“…Gender differences should be more pronounced in the older than the younger age group (Voyer et al, 1995). (2) For perceived mental-rotation performance, we predicted higher scores for males than for females (Estes & Felker, 2012) and for older than for younger participants and smaller gender differences in the younger than the older age group (Rahe & Quaiser-Pohl, 2019). (3) For math anxiety, we predicted higher scores for females than for males (Ferguson et al, 2015;Hopko et al, 2003;Lauer et al, 2018;Sokolowski et al, 2019) and for older than for younger participants (Hopko et al, 2003) and smaller gender differences for the younger age group.…”

“…Reasons for male advantages in mental-rotation performance could be biological (Alexander & Son, 2007;Quinn & Liben, 2014) or strategical factors (Boone & Hegarty, 2017;Hegarty, 2018;Heil & Jansen-Osmann, 2008) as well as gender differences in confidence (Estes & Felker, 2012) or perceived spatial abilities (Rahe & Quaiser-Pohl, 2019). Additional reasons could be experimental factors, e.g., variances in time constraints (Voyer, 2011) or feedback about the individual answer in the test (Rahe et al, 2019a, b).…”

Cubes or Pellets in Mental-Rotation Tests: Effects on Gender Differences and on the Performance in a Subsequent Math Test

“…Previous research found larger gender differences for more difficult material [9]. In the present study, a medium main effect of stimulus material revealed that the pellet figures seemed to be more difficult to rotate [23]. Consequently, gender differences in favor of males should have been larger in the P-MRT than in the C-MRT.…”