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ERIC Number: EJ922959
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Jun
Pages: 6
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-2626
EISSN: N/A
Mental Rotation Does Not Account for Sex Differences in Left-Right Confusion
Ocklenburg, Sebastian; Hirnstein, Marco; Ohmann, Hanno Andreas; Hausmann, Markus
Brain and Cognition, v76 n1 p166-171 Jun 2011
Several studies have demonstrated that women believe they are more prone to left-right confusion (LRC) than men. However, while some studies report that there is also a sex difference in LRC tasks favouring men, others report that men and women perform equally well. Recently, it was suggested that sex differences only emerge in LRC tasks when they involve mental rotation. That is, sex differences that are reported for some LRC tasks are strongly affected by the well-documented male advantage in mental rotation. To test this assumption, 91 participants were investigated on two LRC tasks: The Left-Right Commands Task and the Bergen Left-Right Discrimination Test. Additionally, participants were asked to complete an LRC self-rating questionnaire. To rule out the possibility that sex differences in LRC are confounded by sex differences in mental rotation, male and female participants were matched for mental rotation performance, resulting in a sample of 46 matched participants. These matched participants showed robust sex differences in favour of men in all LRC measurements. This suggests that pronounced sex differences in LRC are a genuine phenomenon that exists independently of sex differences in mental rotation.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A