The differences in visual spatial ability among females and males: Does practice have an effect on performance? Many scientists have studied the sex differences in spatial abilities. Different designs of testing have been used to test this subject. A simple Mental Rotation Test (MRT) was designed to test the spatial abilities of males verse females in identifying rotated objects. The test consisted of two trials to measure whether practice had an effect on performance. Nine males and 30 females participated in the spatial rotation test. Regardless of trials males perform significantly higher in spatial rotation tasks then females. The effect of trials had a positive effect on females and no effect on males. Females scores increased after the first trial. Where as males scores stayed consistent from trial one and trial two. The results suggest that males complete spatial visualization task more accurately then females, although females accuracy improves with practice. The differences in visual spatial ability among females and malesDoes Practice have an effect on performanceThroughout the past few decades Scientists have been studying spatial visualization among males and females. In many cases, males score significantly higher in this area and in others reports show no significant difference between males and females scores but do report that scores were higher in a specific gender. One of these studies is Schaefer and Thomass (1998) study on spatial tasks and sex differences in gains from practice, tested college students on recognition of a rotated figure embedded in pictures. Although Schaefer and Thomass (1998) results do not show a significant difference for females verse males, figures showed males scored higher numbers during testing. Studies have been done using different difficulty levels of spatial rotation testing and have come up with statistics supporting males abilities being higher then females. ...
