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Gender-Related Differences in Academically Talented Students' Scores and Use of Time on Tests of Spatial Ability

Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth (IAAY) The Johns Hopkins University

Gender-related differences in test scores of spatial ability have been ascribed to a tendency of females to take more time in working on such tasks, which is believed to be to their disadvantage in time-limited tests. This hypothesis was examined in a population of academically talented students who took four subtests on the computer of the Spatial Test Battery of the Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth. Males had higher scores on three of these tests, females on another test which was a measure of visual memory. Females tended to take more time to work on the tests, even when their scores were higher than those of males, but this difference was substantial only for two of the tests. The time taken to work on the items was positively correlated with the scores on two of the tests. These results indicate that the amount of time taken can neither explain gender-related score differences on spatial tests in general nor is the habit to use more time necessarily detrimental to test performance. The habit to work quickly or slowly on spatial tests appeared to be a fairly general characteristic. It seems to be different from speed of cognitive processing. When asked to give ratings on their performance on the tests, females tended to estimate their scores more modestly than males, although females, like males, tended to overestimate their performance on two of the measures.

Gifted Child Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3, 157-171 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/001698629804200304


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