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Spatial abilities contribute to life and occupational competencies, and certain spatial skills differ, on average, between males and females, typically favoring males when differences occur. Factors contributing to spatial skills could include prenatal as well as experiential/cultural influences, with biological and social influences likely interacting and difficult to disentangle. This meta-analysis examined the potential influence of prenatal androgen exposure on spatial skill by examining studies of patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). CAH involves elevated adrenal androgens prenatally, with overall androgen concentrations higher for females with CAH versus same-sex controls but with little overall difference between males with CAH versus controls. We hypothesized that, if androgens contribute prenatally to neurobehavioral development in humans as in many other species, females with CAH would show spatial enhancement versus control females, but with no definitive hypothesis for males. Meta-analysis of 12 studies examining overall spatial skill and three spatial subcategories failed to support enhanced spatial performance for females with CAH; males with CAH showed lower spatial ability compared to control males, at least for the category of overall spatial skill. Although statistical logic precludes accepting the null hypothesis for females, the meta-analysis failed to support the idea that prenatal exposure to androgens explains spatial gender/sex differences in humans. Alternative explanations for average gender/sex differences in some spatial tasks could include androgen exposure at other times, such as mini-puberty, or different social factors experienced by males and females. We also discuss possible explanations for the different outcomes seen in females versus males with CAH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have suggested that Asians perform better than North Americans on spatial tasks but show smaller sex differences. In this study, we evaluated the relationship between long-term experience with a pictorial written language and spatial performance. It was hypothesized that native Japanese Kanji (a complex pictorial written language) educated adults would show smaller sex differences on spatial tasks than Japanese Americans or North Americans without Kanji education. A total of 80 young healthy participants (20 native Japanese speakers, 20 Japanese Americans-non Japanese speaking, and 40 North Americans-non Japanese speaking) completed the Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT), the Mental Rotations Test (MRT), and customized 2D and 3D spatial object location memory tests. As predicted, main effects revealed men performed better on the MRT and RCFT and women performed better on the spatial object location memory tests. Also, as predicted, native Japanese performed better on all tests than the other groups. In contrast to the other groups, native Japanese showed a decreased magnitude of sex differences on aspects of the RCFT (immediate and delayed recall) and no significant sex difference on the efficiency of the strategy used to copy and encode the RCFT figure. This study lends support to the idea that intensive experience over time with a pictorial written language (i.e., Japanese Kanji) may contribute to increased spatial performance on some spatial tasks as well as diminish sex differences in performance on tasks that most resemble Kanji. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental rotation and line angle judgment performance were assessed in more than 90,000 women and 111,000 men from 53 nations. In all nations, men’s mean performance exceeded women’s on these two visuospatial tasks. Gender equality (as assessed by United Nations indices) and economic development (as assessed by per capita income and life expectancy) were significantly associated, across nations, with larger sex differences, contrary to the predictions of social role theory. For both men and women, across nations, gender equality and economic development were significantly associated with better performance on the two visuospatial tasks. However, these associations were stronger for the mental rotation task than for the line angle judgment task, and they were stronger for men than for women. Results were discussed in terms of evolutionary, social role, and stereotype threat theories of sex differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]