Sex Differences in the Haptic Change Task

Heller, Morton A.; Jones, Michele Lynn; Walk, Anne M.; Schnarr, Rita; Hasara, Ashley; Litwiller, Brett

doi:10.1080/00221300903293063

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The participants indicated which raised line pictures were moved to new locations. Females exhibited better location judgement, which may indicate superior HA 8 . Contrastingly, another study suggested that men have superior HA 9 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…On the other hand, sex-mediated differences in performance on haptic tasks are inconsistently described in the literature. One study found females to be more accurate when completing a location judgement task, thus suggesting that they have superior HA 8 . The task involved blindfolded participants haptically exploring a set of 15 raised-line pictures, akin to braille, trying to remember their location.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do Males Feel What Females Feel? Investigating the Influence of Sex on Haptic Abilities

Suri,

Wilson

2024

WURJ:HNS

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Interacting with objects in one’s environment is a part of life, and at all times these interactions require the use of somatosensory systems, whether it be visual, auditory, or haptic. Within visual realms, spatial abilities (SA) represent the cognitive capacity to remember & manipulate mental representations of objects to problem solve. Haptic abilities (HA) refer to the cognitive ability to acquire information & meaningfully manipulate objects through touch. Males consistently outperform females on standardized SA tests such as the Mental Rotations Test (MRT). The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of sex on HA, which is currently unknown. Given the removal of any visual spatial advantage in solely haptic tasks, it was hypothesized that although males outperform females on spatial ability tasks, this sex difference will be removed in tasks measuring HA. The MRT was used to measure SA, and a 3D version of the MRT coined the Haptic Abilities Test (HAT) was used to measure HA. The HAT was completed under two test conditions: a haptic (H) condition required the use of solely touch, while the other condition used sight & haptics (SH) to discriminate shape. Males outperformed females in the SH condition. However, this sex difference was eliminated in the purely haptic (H) HAT condition. In this condition, both sexes arrived at solutions through the differential use of haptic exploratory strategies. Given pandemic-driven migrations to online education where no haptics are possible, these findings raise concerns. Specifically, if haptics work to reduce the advantage males have over females when completing spatial tasks, the current online shift adversely affects females. Understanding the influence of sex on haptics can therefore result in more equitable learning environments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Males Feel What Females Feel? Investigating the Influence of Sex on Haptic Abilities

Suri,

Wilson

2024

WURJ:HNS

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Tactual perception: a review of experimental variables and procedures

Fernandes

Albuquerque

2012

Cogn Process

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This paper reviews the literature on tactual perception. Throughout this review, we will highlight some of the most relevant aspects in the touch literature: type of stimuli; type of participants; type of tactile exploration; and finally, the interaction between touch and other senses. Regarding type of stimuli, we will analyse studies with abstract stimuli such as vibrations, with two- and three-dimensional stimuli, and also concrete stimuli, considering the relation between familiar and unfamiliar stimuli and the haptic perception of faces. Under the "type of participants" topic, we separated studies with blind participants, studies with children and adults, and also performed an overview of sex differences in performance. The type of tactile exploration is explored considering conditions of active and passive touch, the relevance of movement in touch and the relation between haptic exploration and time. Finally, interactions between touch and vision, touch and smell and touch and taste are explored in the last topic. The review ends with an overall conclusion on the state of the art for the tactual perception literature. With this work, we intend to present an organised overview of the main variables in touch experiments, compiling aspects reported in the tactual literature, and attempting to provide both a summary of previous findings, and a guide to the design of future works on tactual perception and memory, through a presentation of implications from previous studies.

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What did you do yesterday? A meta-analysis of sex differences in episodic memory.

Asperholm¹,

Högman²,

Rafi³

et al. 2019

Psychological Bulletin

156

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To remember what one did yesterday is an example of an everyday episodic memory task, in which a female advantage has sometimes been reported. Here, we quantify the impact of sex on episodic memory performance and investigate whether the magnitude of the sex difference is modified by study-, task-, and sample-specific moderators. Analyses were based on 617 studies conducted between 1973 and 2013 with 1,233,921 participants. A 5-level random-effects meta-analysis showed an overall female advantage in episodic memory (g = 0.19, 95% CI [0.17, 0.21]). The material to be remembered affected the magnitude of this advantage, with a female advantage for more verbal tasks, such as words, sentences, and prose (g = 0.28, 95% CI [0.25, 0.30]), nameable images (g = 0.16, 95% CI [0.11, 0.22]), and locations (g = 0.16, 95% CI [0.11, 0.21]), and a male advantage in more spatial tasks, such as abstract images (g = −0.20, 95% CI [−0.35, –0.05]) and routes (g = −0.24, 95% CI [−0.35, –0.12]). Furthermore, there was a female advantage for materials that cannot easily be placed along the verbal-spatial continuum, such as faces (g = 0.26, 95% CI [0.20, 0.33]), and odor, taste, and color (g = 0.37, 95% CI [0.18, 0.55]). These differences have remained stable since 1973. For verbal episodic memory tasks, differences were larger in Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America than in Asia, and smaller in childhood and old age than for other ages. Taken together, results suggest that men may use their spatial advantage in spatially demanding episodic memory tasks, whereas women do well in episodic memory tasks that are verbalizable and tasks that are neither verbal nor spatial, such as remembering faces and odors/tastes/colors.

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Sex Differences in the Haptic Change Task

Cited by 6 publications

References 19 publications

Do Males Feel What Females Feel? Investigating the Influence of Sex on Haptic Abilities

Do Males Feel What Females Feel? Investigating the Influence of Sex on Haptic Abilities

Tactual perception: a review of experimental variables and procedures

What did you do yesterday? A meta-analysis of sex differences in episodic memory.

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