Spatial Tasks on a Large, High-Resolution Tiled Display: Females Mentally Rotate Large Objects Faster Than Men

Abstract

In order to assess the qualitative properties of large displays, compared to smaller displays we conducted an experiment using a mental rotation task and a large, 230 inches, tiled display and compared it to performance on a 14.1 inches laptop computer. We also investigated the effect of expectation about the novel technology among the participants. We found that females rotated objects faster than men on the large display with wider field of view. Furthermore, we found that females were influenced by the expectation that the large display should give better performance, since such a positive expectation yielded a faster performance only among females, with no apparent sacrifice of accuracy.