Differential cue utilization by males and females in pattern copying.

Previous research on pattern copying indicates that male performance improves when reference cues are added to the task, but that female performance remains unaffected by the additional information. Results of experiment 1 reveal that it is the presence of cues in the modeled pattern, rather than on the drawing sheet, that is primarily responsible for the improved copying accuracy. The data also replicate the differential cue utilization by male and female 10-year-olds. Experiment 2 found no such differential performance with a 7-year-old sample. The findings are considered relative to other visual-spatial research.