Abstract
The present experiment investigated sex differences across stimulus types in a chronometric mental rotation task. The working hypothesis was that human bodies as stimuli would reduce the magnitude of sex differences compared to cubes as stimuli, from the embodied cognition perspective. One hundred and twenty participants, 60 men and 60 women solved chronometric mental rotation items with Shepard–Metzler cube figures, head-cubes, and human bodies, all designed so that they were similar in shape. Two figures of a given stimulus type were presented on the screen and participants had to judge if both items were mirrored or non-mirrored. Results showed better mental rotation performance with human bodies than with other types of stimuli for both sexes, although the effect of stimulus type was more pronounced in men than in women. Furthermore, regardless of stimulus type, men were more accurate than women. Altogether, the results suggest that sex differences are not reduced when human bodies are used as stimuli in a chronometric task. Implications for accounts of sex differences in mental rotations are discussed.
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Notes
Our choice of data analysis was based on the fact that the use of a percentage as a dependent variable in analysis of variance carries a set of problems, especially when it comes to a valid assessment of interactions (see Dixon, 2008; and Jaeger, 2008 for more details). Considering that the interaction between sex and stimulus type is crucial to our predictions, data were analyzed with logistic mixed linear modeling, as recommended by both Dixon and Jaeger to ensure a proper statistical test of hypotheses. Specifically, following Dixon’s suggestion, a mixed linear model where participants were treated as random effects was computed as it is appropriate to the repeated-measures design used here. The linear mixed-effects model was fit with the glmer program in the lme4 R package (Bates, Maechler, Bolker, & Walker, 2014) using maximum likelihood method for parameter estimation. Furthermore, as recommended by Dixon, incremental models were compared to determine the most parsimonious one (as estimated through the deviance obtained for each model). The mean percentage of correct response is reported in its raw form in the results to facilitate data interpretations.
The approach proposed by Baayen and Milin (2010) for the analysis of response time data was followed. Specifically, mixed linear modeling was applied to the inverse response times with minimal trimming, followed by model criticism (with a cutoff point for residuals above 2.5 standard deviations). For response time, means are reported in their raw form as well as in the transformed inverse form (multiplied by −1000 to preserve scaling) to optimize interpretations of the results.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada to D. Voyer. We are grateful to Dr. Michel-Ange Amorim for providing the stimuli used here. Furthermore we thank Andre Buchner, Marcus Schuster, and Maximilan Vollath for their assistance with data collection, as well as Jennifer Lehmann for programming the mental rotation task. Finally, the authors are thankful to Susan D. Voyer for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Voyer, D., Jansen, P. Sex differences in chronometric mental rotation with human bodies. Psychological Research 80, 974–984 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-015-0701-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-015-0701-x