Sex differences in a chronometric mental rotation test with cube figures

Abstract

In chronometric mental rotation tasks, sex differences are widely discussed. Most studies find men to be more skilled in mental rotation than women, which can be explained by the holistic strategy that they use to rotate stimuli. Women are believed to apply a piecemeal strategy. So far, there have been no studies investigating this phenomenon using eye-tacking methods in combination with electroencephalography (EEG) analysis: the present study compared behavioral responses, EEG activity, and eye movements of 15 men and 15 women while solving a three-dimensional chronometric mental rotation test. The behavioral analysis showed neither differences in reaction time nor in the accuracy rate between men and women. The EEG data showed a higher right activation on parietal electrodes for women and the eye-tracking results indicated a longer fixation in a higher number of areas of interest at 0° for women. Men and women are likely to possess different perceptual (visual search) and decision-making mechanisms, but similar mental rotation processes. Furthermore, men presented a longer visual search processing, characterized by the greater saccade latency of 0°–135°. Generally, this study could be considered a pilot study to investigate sex differences in mental rotation tasks while combining eye-tracking and EEG methods.

Sex differences in visuomotor tracking

“…Second, there is some evidence that males exhibit a better perception of visual motion direction 31 . Third, it has been proposed that males and females employ distinct gaze behavior when solving cognitive tasks such as mental rotation 32 or the salesman problem 33 for instances. All these observations encouraged the comparison of male and female gaze behavior as this could account for sex differences in manual tracking.…”

Mental rotation: The effects of processing strategy, gender and task characteristics on children's accuracy, reaction time and eye movements’ pattern

“…1.5 Eye movements, gender and cognitive strategy Eye movements' data reflect attention shifting and provides an indication of the cognitive processes, beyond behavioral parameters of reaction time and accuracy (Hayhoe, 2004;Liversedge & Findlay, 2000). The main parameters that are being used for eye-tracking studies among adults (Nazateth et al, 2018;Scheer, Maturana, & Jansen, 2018) and children (Kashani et al, 2018;Moiroud, Christophe, Peyre, & Maria, 2018) are fixations and saccades. Fixations are pauses over informative areas of interest (AOI).…”

“…When men were more accurate than women on the MR test, their advantage was reflected in more useful scanning pattern, as they spent more time observing the correct answers and had shorter fixations on distractors, compared to women (Alexander & Son, 2007). On the other hand, Scheer et al (2018), used a MR test that did not reveal gender differences in accuracy or reaction time. Similarly, no gender differences were found in the MR processes, as both men and women showed similar number of fixations and saccades' latency.…”

“…Eye movements' data reflect attention shifting and provides an indication of the cognitive processes, beyond behavioral parameters of reaction time and accuracy ( 31 , 32 ). The main parameters that are being used for eye-tracking studies among adults ( 7 , 26 , 33 ) and children ( 34 ) are fixations and saccades. Fixations are pauses over informative areas of interest (AOI).…”

“…Similarly, no gender differences were found in the MR processes, as both men and women showed similar number of fixations and saccades' latency. Nevertheless, gender differences were found for the visual search (at an angular disparity of 0°), as men use a holistic strategy and women a piecemeal strategy ( 33 ). Nazareth et al ( 7 ) found gender differences in accuracy in favor of men, yet men and women did not differ in their scanning strategy, as they both used a local strategy.…”