Comparing Spatial Ability of Male and Female Students Completing Humanities vs. Technical Degrees

Abstract

Background. Spatial ability (SA) has long been the focus of research in psychology, because it is associated with performance in science, technologies, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Research has shown that males consistently outperform females in most aspects of SA, which may partially explain the observed overrepresentation of male students seeking STEM degrees.Objective. This study examines sex and field of study (degree) differences in different aspects of spatial ability and its structure.Design. We assessed SA by using an on-line gamified battery, which included 10 spatial tests capturing 10 dimensions of spatial ability, among which were mental rotation, spatial visualization, spatial scanning, spatial reasoning, perspective-taking, and mechanical reasoning. The sample consisted of 882 STEM (55% males) and Humanities (20% males) university students in Russia.Results. Males outperformed females on all assessed components of SA with a small effect size (1-11%). We also found that students from STEM fields outperformed Humanities students on all SA subtests (effect size ranged from 0.2 to 7%). These differences by study choice were not fully explained by the observed over-representation of males in the STEM group. The results of the study suggested no interaction between sex and degree. In other words, on average, males outperformed females, irrespective of whether they were STEM or humanities students; and the STEM advantage was observed for both 38 E. A. Esipenko et al.males and females. The same unifactorial structure of SA was observed in the STEM and Humanities groups. Conclusion.Our results are consistent with previous research, suggesting sex and study field differences in SA. Longitudinal research is needed to explore the causal mechanisms underscoring these differences.

Measuring Spatial Ability for Talent Identification, Educational Assessment, and Support: Evidence from Adolescents with High Achievement in Science, Arts, and Sports

“…Cross-track di erences also emerged in the structure of SA. Results from the factor analysis for the whole sample on the Science and Sports tracks replicated the previous ndings of the unifactorial structure of the spatial ability (Esipenko et al, 2018;Likhanov et al, 2018;Rimfeld et al, 2017). However, for the Arts track, a two-factorial structure emerged (Elithorn mazes and Mazes tests formed the second factor).…”

“…For example, the Science track showed the highest results in all four tests. We also compared the results of the Science track with previous results and found higher average performance in the Science track than that of unselected university students from China and Russia (Esipenko et al, 2018;Likhanov et al, 2018) and of an unselected population of young adults from UK (Rimfeld et al, 2017). Our result was also consistent with repeatedly found correlations between math and spatial ability (.43;Tosto et al, 2014), and between intelligence and academic achievement (.60 -.96;Bouchard & Fox, 1984;Deary, Strand, Smith, & Fernandes, 2007;Kemp, 1955;Wiseman, Meade, & Parks, 1966).…”

“…As described in the Method section, gender distribution across tracks was uneven. Previous studies that employed the same SA battery showed moderate gender di erences in a British sample of young adults (Toivainen et al, 2018) and samples of Russian (Esipenko et al, 2018) and Chinese students (Likhanov et al, 2018). We examined gender e ects in 11 one-way ANOVAs (10 tests and the total score) that showed male advantage for three tests, as well as a total SA score, and female advantage for two tests.…”

“…However, several recent studies (Esipenko et al, 2018;Likhanov et al, 2018;Malanchini et al, 2019;Rimfeld et al, 2017) showed that spatial ability might have a unifactorial rather than multidimensional structure. For example, research has shown that the 10 spatial ability tests which form a King's Challenge test battery (Rimfeld et al, 2017), constitute a single factor in British and Russian samples, explaining 42 and 40 percent of overall variance in spatial ability measures, respectively (Likhanov et al, 2018;Rimfeld et al, 2017).…”

The Jack and Jill Adaptive Working Memory Task: Construction, Calibration and Validation

“…Spatial ability battery . Four tasks from the computerised spatial ability battery King’s challenge [ 50 ] (for Russian adaptation see [ 102 , 103 ]) were used (See Table 8 for the tasks descriptions). A subtest is ended once a participant gives incorrect answers on four consecutive items.…”