Sex differences in curve tracing

Abstract

The present study reports on 4 experiments aimed at investigating potential sex differences on a curve tracing task. Furthermore, curve tracing was used as an indirect approach to explore the holistic versus piecemeal strategy hypothesis used to account for sex differences in mental rotation. In Experiment 1, participants only completed a curve tracing task. The Navon (1977) local/global task was added in Experiment 2, whereas mental rotation was included in Experiment 3. Experiment 4 corrected issues encountered with the mental rotation task in Experiment 3. All 4 experiments showed a performance advantage for men on accuracy in curve tracing, although the Sex × Distance interaction required to support preference for a holistic strategy in men was not found. The Navon task findings supported the notion that men show a reduced global precedence effect when compared with women. The performance advantage for men in mental rotation only emerged in Experiment 4. Finally, the tasks showed a pattern of correlations suggestive of common components aside from attention. The General Discussion focuses on alternative explanations of the findings and further research required to elucidate them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).