Abstract
This study used the cognitive tasks of mental rotation and color recall to investigate performance differences between males and females. The objective was to replicate previous findings that males have shorter mental rotation response times (RT) and that females have higher accuracy in recalling hues. We hypothesized that when combining these two tasks that compete for mental resources, that males would respond more quickly in the mental rotation portion of the task and females would more accurately recall the color of the cued object in the visual working memory portion. Participants were shown pairs of asymmetrical block objects that were either identical or mirrored versions of each other. The objects were rotated 60, 120, or 180 degrees relative to one another and appeared in a different color, separated by 60, 120, or 180 degrees in the HSV color space. The objects were removed after five seconds for the mental rotation task, and participants were cued to recall the color of one of the two objects by selecting a hue on a color wheel. Data collection is currently in progress. Mental rotation RT and degree of error for color recall will be analyzed using a 2(sex; male, female) x 3(degree of rotation; 60, 120, 180) x 2(image similarity; same, mirrored) x 3 (hue separation; 60, 120, 180) mixed ANOVA with all variables other than sex as within-subjects variables. We expect that there will be significant interaction between sex and degree of rotation and sex and degree of hue separation. Main effects are expected to be increasing mental rotation RT for increasing degree of rotation, increasing hue recall error with decreasing degree of hue separation, and a main effect of sex on hue recall error. If the hypotheses are supported, then future research should investigate the causes of these sex-based performance differences.