Vecchi T, Girelli L
Institute of Psychology, School of Medicine, University of Milan, Italy.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 1998 Jun;99(1):1-16. doi: 10.1016/s0001-6918(97)00052-8.
The study here reported investigates the hypothesis that gender differences in visuo-spatial abilities are mainly confined to active processing tasks. Male and female participants were required to perform passive tasks involving the recall of previously memorized positions within matrices of different sizes, as well as active tasks in which they had to mentally follow a pathway in the same matrices. The results confirmed that male superiority became evident as the active processing requirements increased while only marginal gender difference was reported in passive tasks. To strengthen the specific role of the active-passive distinction in identifying gender differences, confounding factors such as type of material and use of verbal strategies were ruled out. These findings, in line with a number of studies on individual differences, high-light the importance of addressing visuo-spatial ability as a multicomponential cognitive function which entails different type of visuo-spatial processing or mechanisms (i.e., active processing and passive storage of information) rather than as a unitary concept.
视觉空间能力的性别差异主要局限于主动加工任务。要求男性和女性参与者执行被动任务，包括回忆不同大小矩阵中先前记忆的位置，以及主动任务，即他们必须在相同矩阵中在脑海中追踪一条路径。结果证实，随着主动加工要求的增加，男性优势变得明显，而在被动任务中仅报告了微小的性别差异。为了强化主动-被动区分在识别性别差异中的特定作用，排除了材料类型和语言策略使用等混杂因素。这些发现与多项关于个体差异的研究一致，强调了将视觉空间能力视为一种多成分认知功能的重要性，这种功能需要不同类型的视觉空间加工或机制（即信息的主动加工和被动存储），而不是作为一个单一的概念。
