Sex Differences in Spatial Ability and Attitudes and Beliefs in Children

Spatial ability is comprised of three components: mental rotation,which is the ability to rotate two or three dimensional figures, spatial perception, which requires determining spatial relationships relative to one’s own body, and spatial visualization, which involves multistep manipulations of spatially presented information. Significant sex differences in spatial ability in adults are well documented for mental rotation and spatial perception, with respective effect sizes of .56 and .44, but not for spatial visualization, in which the effect size is only .19. However, sex differences in spatial ability in children remain unclear. Aditional research has shown the importance of beliefs and attitudes in relation to achievement performance. The present study was designed to examine sex differences in spatial ability in elementary school children and to examine how their beliefs and attitudes are related to performance on these tasks and to three school subjects.