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    Environment can mitigate differences in Spatial Ability

Western cognitive psychology generally reports marked differences in the performances of men and women on certain standard measures of spatial ability. Spatial deficiencies in females are now recognised as the result of environmental bias and researchers are beginning to find that training can help women improve their scores on tests of mental rotation and other spatial tasks. In some cases training can actually eliminate the difference between males and females.

Men consistently outperform women on Piaget’s water-level task. In the task, subjects are shown a picture of a container with a certain level of water in it, depicted by a line drawn across the container, they then see the container tilted but empty. The task requires a participant to draw in the water line on the tilted container. The correct solution is to draw the water line parallel to the ground, as the physics of water predicts.

Ross Vasta, PhD, of the State University of New York, conducted a study with adults which, successfully eliminated the gender difference in performing the water-level task by training participants in advance. The results were most interesting: women who had completed the training performed slightly better than men who had had the training. When asked to explain the principles behind the task, many more men than women—in both the training group and in a control group that didn’t receive training on the task—answered correctly. However, more women in the training group answered correctly than women in the control group.

Carol Lawton, PhD, and Kevin Morrin, PhD, of Indiana University—Purdue University Fort Wayne, used a similar strategy to help women with their performance on a real world mental rotation task. In two studies participants moved about in a 3-D video world that consisted of hallways perpendicular to each other. The 123 women and 96 men in the first study and 115 women and 67 men in the second study were then asked to make either two, four or six turns and then point toward the direction from which they had began. The results included a worsening in performance as the number of turns increased. Without training males outperformed females and once training was introduced both males and females performances improved.

The researchers determined that the more exposure an individual has had to video-game playing the better they performed. As men, on average, play more video games than women, when Lawton and Morrin accounted for video-game experience, the difference between the genders decreased. This indicated the significant role of environment in the gender difference.

Using a real-world navigation task and a similar type of training, MaryAnn Baenninger, PhD, of the College of New Jersey, was able to eliminate this gender difference. 120 prospective college students—60 men and 60 women were brought onto a campus they had never seen previously and were brought individually on a tour of a new building. Once a basement room in this building was reached they were asked to point towards a landmark previously indicated by the researchers. As expected, without any training or help, men outperformed women on this task. However, had the researchers told the students to keep the position of this landmark in mind during the tour, women performed as well as men. Women also performed as well as men once they saw a floor plan of the building before entering it and if they were allowed to carry this floor plan throughout the tour. Baenninger concluded "This study shows that there is no underlying biological inability for women to do this task,"

Although these studies don’t rule out a biologically determined proclivity for men to do better than women on spatial tasks, they show clear evidence that the environment can help modify the gender difference...... Nora Newcombe, PhD, a spatial development researcher at Temple University.