Bodies and occlusion: Item types, cognitive processes, and gender differences in mental rotation

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to reexamine previous findings in which the magnitude of the male advantage in mental rotation abilities increased when participants mentally rotated occluded versus nonoccluded items and decreased when participants mentally rotated human figures versus blocks. Mainly, the study aimed to address methodological issues noted on previous human figure mental rotations tests as the items composed of blocks and human body were probably not equivalent in terms of their cognitive requirements. Our results did not support previous research on embodied cognition as mental rotation performance decreased among both men and women when mentally rotating human figures compared to block items. However, for women, the effect of occlusion was decreased when mentally rotating human figures. Results are discussed in terms of task difficulty and gender differences in confidence and guessing behaviour.