To investigate why some individuals, especially females, fail Piaget's horizontality task, the author administered Piaget's horizontality task, the rod and frame field-dependence task, Bem's Sex Role Inventory, and a history of spatial activities questionnaire to 122 undergraduates. Individuals who failed the horizontality task were trained on this task, and after 1 month all participants were administered a horizontality posttest. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that field dependence was related significantly to both pretest and posttest scores. Sex and masculine sex role concept were related to pretest but not to posttest scores. The implications of these findings for group differences in horizontality performance are discussed.

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90 undergraduates with low spatial perceptual ability were assigned to one of three groups of control, learner-guided instructions, and tutor-guided instructions. The groups differed in amount and type of spatial training administered in a laboratory setting. Participants completed horizontality and vertically spatial perceptual tasks immediately after pretesting and again one month later. Both groups given training showed more accurate performance at posttest than at pretest. In addition, the learner-guided instruction group outperformed the tutor-guided instruction group and control group at posttest and on novel but related tasks. Gender differences in posttest performance favoring males (n = 35) were obtained in the tutor-guided performance group and control group but not in the learner-guided instruction group. The number of hints the latter needed during training was predictive of posttest performance. Implications for assessment and remediation of undergraduates' spatial perceptual abilities are discussed.