“There is only one cognitive spatial aware-
ness test in which women have been infer
ior to men over time. And that’s the test of
mental rotation,” says Bernt Ivar Olsen.
Olsen’s research has shown that wom-
en’s spatial awareness is not necessarily all
that different from men’s, Differences that
are detected may be explained by the way
the test is conducted. In the course of com-
pleting his PhD in computer science, Olsen
made some surprising discoveries about
the mental rotation test.
This specific test is one of the oldest
cognitive tests in use, and has been around
since the 1970s. Mental rotation involves
comparing three-dimensional objects. Test
subjects are shown two objects and have to
determine whether they are different or if
one is a rotation of the other.
“It turns out that the bigger the screen
is, the slower men are in solving these prob-
lems,” says Olsen.
He conducted two studies in collabo-
ration with psychology professor Bruno
Laeng.
“Psychology has employed modern
technology to create tests that can teach us
about how our brains solve problems. But
now it is time to ask whether the techno
logy itself has some implications for how we
solve problems,” says Olsen.
Giant screen create failures
Olsen conducted his tests using both
a conventional laptop and on the biggest
screen he could find: A 230-inch display wall
at the university’s Department of Informat-
ics. With 22 million pixels, this is certainly a
dream screen for some men. But given Ols-
en’s results, the size is perhaps not some-
thing men should cheer about.
“In previous tests men were both faster
and more accurate in mental rotation.
However, our findings were quite different.
It turned out that women were unaffected
by screen size in my experiment. The men’s
performance, when tested on the big
screen, deteriorated by 27 per cent. They
were still more accurate than women, but
the rate went down considerably,” Olsen
said.
Olsen’s finding may support the theory
that men and women use different men-
tal strategies to solve the mental rotation
problem. Men often choose to rotate the
object mentally and then make a compar-
ison, in what is called a holistic strategy.
Women choose to look at selected parts
of the object and look for these variables
when comparing the objects, an approach
called a piecemeal strategy.
“The magnification of the object may
also mean that men need more time to
build the comparison mentally,” says Olsen.
Important for health workers
This may seem like interesting but unim-
portant information, perhaps of greatest
importance to gamers who play shooters
on the big screen. But Olsen explains that it
can also be a life-or-death issue.
“People in radiology departments look
at models of human organs on a monitor.
When a doctor examines an X-ray, it is
often only minimal differences that show
whether a patient has cancer. The fact that
the screen size has a significant effect on
men’s abilities to interpret information is
important to know. Perhaps we need to
invest in a comfortable size screens that
provides maximum benefit and minimal
inconvenience for both sexes,” he says.
When size matters
It’s generally thought that women are inferior to men when it comes to spatial awareness.
But only one psychological test has shown this. And new research casts doubt on its merits.
Text: Maja Sojtarić
13
labyrint
•
research magazine
from
u
i
t
the
arctic
university
of
norway
Women and men can interpret these images differently. Is the figure on the right different from the
one on the left? Or is it just a rotation? Photo: Bernt Ivar Olsen
