Spatial anxiety mediates the sex difference in adult mental rotation test performance.

ABSTRACT: Mental rotation ability is associated with successful advances in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and occupations. Meta-analyses have shown consistent sex disparities in mental rotation, where men outperform women on one measure of mental rotation ability, the Mental Rotations Test (MRT). Spatial anxiety, or the fear and apprehension felt when completing a task that requires spatial thinking, was proposed as a mechanism explaining the relation between sex and mental rotation test performance. This study modified the Spatial Anxiety Scale (SAS) to include questions about how anxious individuals feel when they must mentally rotate items to accomplish a task (e.g., playing Tetris). An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to assess the factorial structur

SUBMITTER: Alvarez-Vargas D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7382671 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature