Contribution of Sex-Differentiated Experiences to Spatial and Mechanical Reasoning Abilities

Abstract
For 137 women and 115 men first-year college students tested spatial visualization and mechanical reasoning were most strongly correlated with four everyday spatial abilities—understanding mathematics/science and graphs/charts, drafting and drawing things, and arranging objects. Despite greater practice on only 2 of 10 activities, men uniformly judged they had significantly better spatial ability compared to their same-gender peers than did the women.