Doyle Randi A, Voyer Daniel
Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 5A3.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2013;66(4):801-15. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2012.719529. Epub 2012 Sep 18.
The aim of the current study was to reexamine previous findings in which the magnitude of the male advantage in mental rotation abilities increased when participants mentally rotated occluded versus nonoccluded items and decreased when participants mentally rotated human figures versus blocks. Mainly, the study aimed to address methodological issues noted on previous human figure mental rotations tests as the items composed of blocks and human body were probably not equivalent in terms of their cognitive requirements. Our results did not support previous research on embodied cognition as mental rotation performance decreased among both men and women when mentally rotating human figures compared to block items. However, for women, the effect of occlusion was decreased when mentally rotating human figures. Results are discussed in terms of task difficulty and gender differences in confidence and guessing behaviour.
本研究的目的是重新审视先前的研究结果，即在心理旋转任务中，当参与者对被遮挡的物品与未被遮挡的物品进行心理旋转时，男性在心理旋转能力上的优势程度会增加；而当参与者对人体图形与方块进行心理旋转时，男性的优势程度会降低。主要而言，本研究旨在解决先前人体图形心理旋转测试中所指出的方法学问题，因为由方块和人体组成的物品在认知要求方面可能并不等同。我们的研究结果并不支持先前关于具身认知的研究，因为与方块物品相比，当对人体图形进行心理旋转时，男性和女性的心理旋转表现均有所下降。然而，对于女性而言，在对人体图形进行心理旋转时，遮挡的影响会减小。我们将根据任务难度以及信心和猜测行为方面的性别差异来讨论研究结果。
