Women match men when learning a spatial skill.

Abstract

Meta-analytic studies have concluded that although training improves spatial cognition in both sexes, the male advantage generally persists. However, because some studies run counter to this pattern, a closer examination of the anomaly is warranted. The authors investigated the acquisition of a basic skill (spatial selective attention) using a matched-pair two-wave longitudinal design. Participants were screened with the use of an attentional visual field task, with the objective of selecting and matching 10 male-female pairs, over a wide range (30% to 57% correct). Subsequently, 20 participants 17-23 years of age (selected from 43 screened) were trained for 10 hr (distributed over several sessions) by playing a first-person shooter video game. This genre is known to be highly effective in enhancing spatial skills. All 20 participants improved, with matched members of the male-female pairs achieving very similar gains, independent of starting level. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the learning trajectory of women is not inferior to that of men when acquiring a basic spatial skill. Training methods that develop basic spatial skills may be essential to achieve gender parity in both basic and complex spatial tasks.

Playing shooter and driving videogames improves top-down guidance in visual search

“…There were no commensurate gains in a control group, showing that the improvements were specific to the action videogames (cf. Feng et al, 2007;Green & Bavelier, 2003, 2006b, 2007Li, Polat, Makous, & Bavelier, 2009;Li, Polat, Scalzo, & Bavelier, 2010;Spence et al, 2009). …”

“…monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The context was World War II in the South Pacific; players navigated a complex virtual environment, completing missions in which they had to kill enemies and avoid being killed in the game (Feng et al, 2007;Green & Bavelier, 2003;Spence et al, 2009). The driving group played the game Need for Speed: Most Wanted using an Xbox 360 and a 30-in.…”

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Commercial Brain Game Training with Working-Memory Tasks

“…Although the current sample size is at least moderate, an obvious issue that may arise as a result of the present random group assignment is that random assignment may easily result in unequal performance at pre-test, especially when many tasks are involved (Campbell and Stanley 1966;Green et al 2014). Future studies could use non-random group assignment protocols specifically designed to reduce imbalance at pre-test (e.g., experimenters create matched pairs based on critical pre-test measures which are then assigned to training and control groups; Spence et al 2009). From a statistical perspective, there is also the issue of multiple comparison testing since we applied 12 tasks across pre-and post-tests.…”

Przegląd badań nad związkami zdolności przestrzennych z kompetencjami z nauk ścisłych uczniów i studentów

“…C. Shawn Green i Daphne Bavelier (2003) wykazali, że trening grami FPS daje dużo lepsze efekty w postaci wzrostu uwagi przestrzennej niż trening grą Tetris. Część badaczy twierdzi, że trening grami FPS może zredukować różnice międzypłciowe w poziomie zdolności przestrzennych (Feng i in., 2007;Spence i in., 2009). Ograniczeniem użyteczności tej metody treningu dla wyrównywania różnic międzypłciowych może być niższe zainteresowanie grami wideo wśród dziewczynek (Hyde, 2013).…”