Impossible “mental rotation” problems: A mismeasure of women's spatial abilities?

Abstract Current textbooks report that men's visual–spatial skills are superior to women's. However, the research is not consistent with this sweeping generalization. We hypothesized that sex differences would be more pronounced on “impossible problems” (mirror images) than possible rotations. We also hypothesized that males' performance would be adversely affected by visual interference, whereas females' performance would be adversely affected by auditory interference. Ninety-five college students (25 males, 70 females) viewed images of a train station from various perspectives, including some that were impossible rotations of the original image. There were no sex differences in accuracy or response time on the possible rotation problems, but males were more accurate than females on impossible problems. Neither auditory nor visual interference affected accuracy. The alleged sex difference in mental rotation problems is largely due to the use of problems that are not actually mental rotation problems.

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