Sex Differences in Curve Tracing and the Mental Rotations Test

The present study aimed to extend the work on the curve tracing task from Voyer and MacPherson (2020) in two experiments replacing the chronometric task they used with a psychometric mental rotation task. Both experiments also manipulated separation between the target and distractor curve to confirm that a zoom lens strategy is used in curve tracing and that this strategy preference is more common for men than women. Experiment 1 also aimed to replicate the correlation between curve tracing and Navon task performance, whereas Experiment 2 determined whether the correlation between curve tracing and mental rotation remained when the attention component was partialed out. In Experiment 1, 49 men and 67 women completed the curve tracing task, the Navon task, and the Mental Rotations Test (MRT). In Experiment 2, 69 men and 66 women completed the curve tracing task, the MRT, and the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). Results in both experiments replicated the effect of distance between dots on the curve and the performance advantage for men in curve tracing. All tasks correlated significantly with each other at least on accuracy. Findings for the distractor curve manipulation replicated support for the use of a zoom lens strategy. However, findings for women and men produced contradictory findings. Finally, partialing out SART performance did not affect the correlation between curve tracing and MRT performance. The discussion emphasizes the common piecemeal processing component in curve tracing and mental rotation. More work is required to examine further potential sex differences in strategy use.