Reinert Regina M, Huber Stefan, Nuerk Hans-Christoph, Moeller Korbinian
Hogrefe AG, Bern, Switzerland.
Knowledge Media Research Center, Tuebingen, Germany.
Br J Psychol. 2017 May;108(2):334-350. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12203. Epub 2016 Jun 22.
Sex differences in mathematical performance have frequently been examined over the last decades indicating an advantage for males especially when numerical problems cannot be solved by (classroom-)learnt strategies and/or estimation. Even in basic numerical tasks such as number line estimation, males were found to outperform females - with sex differences argued to emerge from different solution strategies applied by males and females. We evaluated the latter using two versions of the number line estimation task: a bounded and an unbounded task version. Assuming that women tend more strongly to apply known procedures, we expected them to be at a particular disadvantage in the unbounded number line estimation task, which is less prone to be solved by specific strategies such as proportion judgement but requires numerical estimation. Results confirmed more pronounced sex differences for unbounded number line estimation with males performing significantly more accurately in this task version. This further adds to recent evidence suggesting that estimation performance in the bounded task version may reflect solution strategies rather than numerical estimation. Additionally, it indicates that sex differences regarding the spatial representation of number magnitude may not be universal, but associated with spatial-numerical estimations in particular.
在过去几十年里，数学成绩方面的性别差异经常被研究，结果表明男性具有优势，尤其是在无法通过（课堂）所学策略和/或估算来解决数值问题时。即使在诸如数轴估计这样的基本数值任务中，也发现男性的表现优于女性——有人认为性别差异源于男性和女性采用的不同解决策略。我们使用数轴估计任务的两个版本对后者进行了评估：一个有界版本和一个无界版本。假设女性更倾向于应用已知程序，我们预计她们在无界数轴估计任务中会处于特别不利的地位，因为该任务不太容易通过诸如比例判断等特定策略来解决，而是需要数值估计。结果证实，在无界数轴估计中性别差异更为明显，男性在这个任务版本中的表现明显更准确。这进一步补充了最近的证据，表明有界任务版本中的估计表现可能反映的是解决策略而非数值估计。此外，这表明在数字大小的空间表征方面的性别差异可能并非普遍存在，而是尤其与空间数值估计相关。
