Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2018 May 30;13(5):e0197311. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197311. eCollection 2018.
Some have explained large sex differences in visuospatial abilities by genetic adaptations to different roles in primitive hunter-gatherer societies and the interaction of innate biological differences and environmental factors. We explored the extent to which variations in behavior and acquired skills can provide alternative accounts for sex differences in the performance of a complex spatially-demanding video game (Space Fortress). Men and women with limited video game experience were given 30 hours of training, and latent curve analyses examined the development of their ship control performance and behavior. Men had significantly better control performance than women before and after training, but differences diminished substantially over the training period. An analysis of participants' joystick behaviors revealed that initially men and women relied on different patterns of control behaviors, but changes in these behaviors over time accounted for the reduced sex differences in performance. When we controlled for these differences in behavior, sex effects after training were no longer significant. Finally, examining the development of control performance and control behaviors of men and women categorized as initially high and low performers revealed the lower-performing women may have been controlling their ship using an approach that was very different from the men and higher-performing women. The potential problems of analyzing men and women's spatial performance as homogenous groups are discussed, as well as how these issues may account for sex differences in skilled video game performance and perhaps other domains involving spatial abilities.
一些人通过对原始狩猎采集社会中不同角色的遗传适应以及先天生物差异和环境因素的相互作用来解释视觉空间能力方面的巨大性别差异。我们探讨了行为和习得技能的变化在多大程度上可以为复杂空间要求的视频游戏（太空堡垒）表现中的性别差异提供替代解释。具有有限视频游戏经验的男性和女性接受了 30 小时的培训，潜在曲线分析考察了他们的船只控制性能和行为的发展。培训前后，男性的控制性能明显优于女性，但在培训期间，差异大大缩小。对参与者操纵杆行为的分析表明，最初男性和女性依赖不同的控制行为模式，但随着时间的推移，这些行为的变化解释了性能上性别差异的减少。当我们控制这些行为差异时，培训后的性别效应不再显著。最后，对最初表现为高绩效和低绩效的男性和女性的控制性能和控制行为的发展进行研究表明，表现较低的女性可能使用了与男性和表现较高的女性非常不同的方法来控制她们的船只。本文讨论了将男性和女性的空间表现分析为同质群体所存在的潜在问题，以及这些问题如何解释熟练视频游戏表现以及可能涉及空间能力的其他领域中的性别差异。
