Sex Differences in Mental Rotation with Polygons of Different Complexity: Do Men Utilize Holistic Processes whereas Women Prefer Piecemeal Ones?

Heil, Martin; Jansen-Osmann, Petra

doi:10.1080/17470210701822967

Cited by 134 publications

(153 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The current study found that the exponent values were larger overall for females than for males, suggesting that females were less reliant on a mental rotation strategy to decide if rotated objects would face to the left or to the right when imagined at the upright. This finding is consistent with research suggesting that strategy differences exist on mental rotation tasks when comparing the performances of males and females (Butler et al, 2006;Heil & Jansen-Osmann, 2008;Hirnstein, Bayer, & Hausmann, 2009). While these sex difference findings are interesting, they are presented with caution as the group sizes were small when comparing the parameters of males and females.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Asymmetric response time functions during left-/right-facing discriminations of rotated objects: The short and the long of it

Searle

Hamm

2015

Mem Cogn

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When deciding if a rotated object would face to the left or to the right, if imagined at the upright, mental rotation is typically assumed to be carried out through the shortest angular distance to the upright prior to determining the direction of facing. However, the response time functions for left-and right-facing objects are oppositely asymmetric, which is not consistent with the standard explanation. Using Searle and Hamm's individual differences adaption of Kung and Hamm's Mixture Model, the current study compares the predicted response time functions derived when assuming that objects are rotated through the shortest route to the upright with the predicted response time functions derived when assuming that objects are rotated in the direction they face. The latter model provides a better fit to the majority of the individual data. This allows us to conclude that, when deciding if rotated objects would face to the left or to the right if imagined at the upright, mental rotation is carried out in the direction that the objects face and not necessarily in the shortest direction to the upright. By comparing results for mobile and immobile object sets we can also conclude that semantic information regarding the mobility of an object does not appear to influence the speed of mental rotation, but it does appear to influence pre-rotation processes and the likelihood of employing a mental rotation strategy.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Asymmetric response time functions during left-/right-facing discriminations of rotated objects: The short and the long of it

Searle

Hamm

2015

Mem Cogn

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“…It is important to note that our findings replicated the classic angular disparity effect (ADE; e.g., Blough & Slavin, 1987;Collins & Kimura, 1997;Cooper, 1975;Heil & Jansen-Osmann, 2008;Kail et al, 1979;Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974;Shepard & Metzler, 1971). ADE shows that rotation performance is directly affected by the angular difference between objects.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Framing the figure: Mental rotation revisited in light of cognitive strategies

Bilge

Taylor

2016

Mem Cogn

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The mental rotation literature commonly reports a sex difference, almost always favoring men. Two strategies have been proposed in the literature to account for this difference: holistic and piecemeal. However, there is great variability in rotation performance suggesting other possible contributing factors. This study investigated the effects of stimuli characteristics and habitual spatial thinking on mental rotation performance. In three experiments, participants completed a mental rotation task with two modifications: (1) 3-D figures were presented with their cut versions to promote piecemeal strategy, and (2) block figures were either presented within a frame or none, in light of reference framework model or perceptual grouping model. Overall, whole figures generated faster responses than cut figures and this was more pronounced with greater angular disparity. Shape or the presence of a frame affected rotation performance. Having a frame seemed to impede overall rotation, especially for cut figures, supporting an object-based reference frame. However, a 3-D frame did not have the same effect, possibly suggesting the unitary configuration idea. Men rotated more accurately than women, but still sex was not as robust as it was suggested in the literature. Interestingly, there were similarities between possible strategy use and habitual spatial thinking. People who were categorized as having landmark-centered representations and who preferred verbal directions showed a pattern suggesting the use of a piecemeal strategy, and surveycentered representations and map preference seemed to reflect a holistic strategy.

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“…It has been a long debate how humans deal with complexity (Heil & Jansen-Osmann, 2008). Across different disciplines it is generally assumed (and experimentally confirmed) that humans will reduce complexity and lower the individual pieces of information that they have to deal with (Cowan, 2001).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigations into the Cognitive Conceptualization and Similarity Assessment of Spatial Scenes

Wallgrün

Yang

Klippel

et al. 2012

Geographic Information Science

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Abstract. Formally capturing spatial semantics is a challenging and still largely unsolved research endeavor. Qualitative spatial calculi such as RCC-8 and the 9-Intersection model have been employed to capture humans' commonsense understanding of spatial relations, for instance, in information retrieval approaches. The bridge between commonsense and formal semantics of spatial relations is established using similarities which are, on a qualitative level, typically formalized using the notion of conceptual neighborhoods. While behavioral studies have been carried out on relations between two entities, both static and dynamic, similar experimental work on complex scenes involving three or more entities is still missing. We address this gap by reporting on three experiments on the category construction of spatial scenes involving three entities in three different semantic domains. To reveal the conceptualization of complex spatial scenes, we developed a number of analysis methods. Our results show clearly that (I) categorization of relations in static scenarios is less dependent on domain semantics than in dynamically changing scenarios, that (II) RCC-5 is preferred over and (III) that the complexity of a scene is broken down by selecting a main reference entity.

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Sex Differences in Mental Rotation with Polygons of Different Complexity: Do Men Utilize Holistic Processes whereas Women Prefer Piecemeal Ones?

Cited by 134 publications

References 19 publications

Asymmetric response time functions during left-/right-facing discriminations of rotated objects: The short and the long of it

Asymmetric response time functions during left-/right-facing discriminations of rotated objects: The short and the long of it

Framing the figure: Mental rotation revisited in light of cognitive strategies

Investigations into the Cognitive Conceptualization and Similarity Assessment of Spatial Scenes

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