Confidence and gender differences on the Mental Rotations Test

“…interaction between sex and training type on MRT change scores was found when statistically controlling for confi dence and performance estimates, characteristics hypothesized to contribute to the sex diff erence in spatial ability (e.g., Quaiser-Pohl & Lehman, 2002 ; Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007 ).”

“common gender beliefs (Cooke-Simpson and Voyer 2007; Moè 2009; Moè and Pazzaglia 2006) and/or gender stereotypes (Ortner and Sieverding 2008; Sharps et al.”

“These findings are consistent with previous research indicating that females are less confident in their spatial ability than are male students (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Estes & Felker, 2012; Syzmanowicz & Furnham, 2011).”

“The effect of time is associated with the strategy used to complete tests, with women being shown to be less self-assured when sitting these tests in mental rotation (Cooke-Simpson and Voyer, 2007) or in questionnaires about attitude and belief (Parsons et al.”

“The limited research available has focused almost exclusively on younger adults in visual search (Redford, Green, Geer, Humphrey, & Thiede, 2011) and mental rotation (i.e., spatial orientation, Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Estes & Felker, 2012).”

“Within the visuospatial cognition literature, males have been found to consistently outperform females in tests of visuospatial reasoning (e.g., Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Debelek, Gittler, & Arendasy, 2014).”

“Because there are gender differences in spatial abilities (Linn and Petersen, 1985; Cooke-Simpson and Voyer, 2007; Peters et al., 2007; Lufler et al., 2012) and spatial abilities may influence an individual’s performance on anatomical tasks (Wilson, 2015), it was taken care to distribute female…”

“19]: the perceived higher task difficulty might induce stereotype-threat effects in girls and consequently result in lower self-confidence, while boys’ low proportion to guessing reflects their higher self-confidence in this domain [28].”

“In contrast, as men are generally more confident in their mental rotation abilities than are women (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007) and have a tendency to guess more often than women (Voyer et al., 2004), men’s propensity to guess on occluded items would probably be similar on both the MRT-R and the…”

“Psychosocial factors proposed include experience with toys, games, activities, and training (e.g., Voyer, Nolan, & Voyer, 2000), gender role identity (e.g., McGlone & Aronson, 2006), and confidence in spatial abilities (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007).”

“Findings of this study are contrary to the limited literature survey we did on this topic (male out performed females as mentioned in [1], [20], [21], [22] and [23]; and not out performing females as in [24]).”

“Furthermore, it is in line with Cooke-Simpson and Voyer (2007), who found higher scores in confidence ratings surveyed after each test item.”

“These include, amongst others, differences in cortical activation patterns (Jordan, Wustenberg, Heinze, Peters, & Jancke, 2002 ), concentration of testosterone (Hooven, Chabris, Ellison, & Kosslyn, 2004 ), differential experience with playing computer or video games (Quaiser-Pohl & Lehmann, 2002 ), task-related confid…”

“In line with the results of Cooke-Simpson and Voyer (2007), males reported a higher confidence than females (H8a).”

“…hormones (Hausmann et al., 2000; Piccardi et al., 2013) or sexual orientation (Peters et al., 2007) have been shown, as well as a robust gender-advantage where men tend to perform better than women (Linn and Petersen, 1985; Jordan et al., 2002; Cooke-Simpson and Voyer, 2007; Peters et al., 2007).”

“This is in line with previous research [20,21] and our hypotheses.”

“Different factors such as the level of anxiety, self-reported confidence or guessing behavior have also been suggested to play a part (e.g., Blough & Slavin, 1987; Goldstein, Haldane, & Mitchell, 1990; Delgado & Prieto, 1996; Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007).”

“…participants during a mental-rotation test about their confidence in their answers, males mostly report higher confidence levels (Cross, Brown, Morgan, & Laland, 2017; Estes & Felker, 2012) and males’ confidence is more accurately related to their performance (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007).”

“Based on literature research, the factors that cause differences in spatial ability are divided into two categories: internal factors and external factors as shown in (Froiland & Davison, 2020), emotion/attitude (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Lennon-Maslin et al ., 2023; Moè, 2009).”

“Moreover, male participants rate their performance in mental rotation tests more positively than women (Cooke-Simpson and Voyer, 2007; Estes and Felker, 2012; Rahe and Jansen, 2022).”

“Specifically, men are typically more confident than women concerning their spatial abilities (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007), and this is likely to be reflected in their self-report concerning related performance.”

“In contrast to previous studies however, we found no differences between men and women in their overall confidence ratings or their correct response times (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Delgado & Prieto, 1996; Goldstein et al., 1990; Peters, 2005; Voyer, 1997; Voyer, Rodgers, & McCormick, 2004).”

“A major limitation of PAT and MRT is that they present sex bias favouring male students [7], but this difference may be more related to the confidence level rather than sex itself as men generally tend to be more self-assured about their performance [34].”

“…internal signals and task-related variations (i.e., difficulty), replicating previous studies that reported correspondence between task performance and confidence judgements during spatial thinking (e.g., Ariel et al., 2018; Ariel & Moffat, 2018; Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Thomas et al., 2012).”

“For mental rotation performance, strong correlations of participants’ confidence in their abilities with their actual performance were found (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Estes & Felker, 2012).”

“In a broad sense, confidence levels can differ across gender, with females being confident in some domains while males are confident in other specialties (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Rivers et al., 2021).”

“When participants were asked about their confidence in their mental rotation task performance, a positive correlation with their actual performance was found (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Estes & Felker, 2012).”

“Confidence in the present study is defined as participants’ belief to have given the right answer (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007) and is closely related to self-efficacy that is defined as people’s individual expectation about their capability (Schunk & Lilly, 1984).”

“Prior work by Hegarty and Waller (2004) and Cooke-Simpson and Voyer (2007) suggested we would be sufficiently powered to detect effects.”

“Cooke-Simpson and Voyer (2006) found a positive correlation between confidence level and test performance and higher confidence levels in males than in females. In the context of spatial orientation, Cornell, Sorenson, and Mio (2003) and Lawton (1996) found no sex differences in confidence. However, Lawton (1996) repo…”

“Confidence is also influenced by gender, with women typically exhibiting underconfidence compared to men (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Hoogervorst et al., 2024; Jakobsson, 2012; Lundeberg, Fox, & Pun ć coha ŕ , 1994; Ross, Scott, & Bruce, 2012; although see Xue et al., 2024).”

“…of spatial abilities” or “spatial self-perception”) such as spatial anxiety, self-efficacy in spatial abilities, and self-confidence in spatial abilities (e.g., Alvarez-Vargas et al., 2020; Arrighi & Hausmann, 2022; Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Estes & Felker, 2012; Towle et al., 2005).”

“[7,8] Representational competence, the ability to interpret, construct, and translate among different types of chemical representations, is another critical but often underdeveloped skill.”

“The authors hypothesized that confidence would function as a mediator of the differences between and within gender, given that previous literature has shown that men are more confident than women in their execution of mental rotation tasks [27] and that confidence is a mediator in other cognitive tasks (i.”

“These results replicate a previously observed robust pattern (Alvarez-Vargas et al., 2020; Arrighi & Hausmann, 2022 ; Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007 ; Estes & Felker, 2012; Lyons et al., 2018 ; Matthews et al., 2024 ; Towle et al., 2005 ).”

“Confi - dence in one’s decisions is positively associated with MR performance (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Estes & Felker, 2012), particularly with evidence accumulation or processing speed (Desender et al., 2019; Notebaert et al., 2009; Purcell & Kiani, 2016).”

“Indeed, prior work reported that confidence can capture performance in mental rotation tests, with moderate to strong confidence–performance cor - relations (Cooke-Simpson & Voyer, 2007; Estes & Felker, 2012).”

“Indeed, prior studies—for instance, Geiser et al. [18], Hugdahl et al. [21], Barkley et al. [3], Cooke-Simpson et al. [13], and Xue et al. [60]—often omit explicit details on display dimensions or equipment portability.”