| Literature DB >> 27014124 |
Wei Wei1, Chuansheng Chen2, Xinlin Zhou3.
Abstract
Previous research has shown that females consistently outperform males in exact arithmetic, perhaps due to the former's advantage in language processing. Much less is known about gender difference in approximate arithmetic. Given that approximate arithmetic is closely associated with visuospatial processing, which shows a male advantage we hypothesized that males would perform better than females in approximate arithmetic. In two experiments (496 children in Experiment 1 and 554 college students in Experiment 2), we found that males showed better performance in approximate arithmetic, which was accounted for by gender differences in spatial ability.Entities:
Keywords: approximate arithmetic; gender difference; spatial ability
Year: 2016 PMID: 27014124 PMCID: PMC4779996 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00306
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Front Psychol ISSN: 1664-1078
The test of symbolic approximate arithmetic.
| Item/Operation | Addition | Subtraction | Multiplication | Division |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1752 + 9339 | 8473 - 1247 | 581 × 64 | 6.664 ÷ 0.98 |
| 2 | 8928 + 5397 | 10395 - 13657 | 735 × 44 | 4144 ÷ 37 |
| 3 | 4578 + 3566 | 27534 - 11846 | 23 × 76 | 23596 ÷ 68 |
| 4 | 8546 + 5773 | 7814 - 1937 | 397 × 35 | 11515 ÷ 47 |
| 5 | 3696 + 1276 | 57631 - 14768 | 34 × 87 | 16068 ÷ 78 |
| 6 | 23.27 + 594.9 | 93.12 - 148.73 | 93 × 0.24 | 5.472 ÷ 57 |
| 7 | 749.6 + 4737.9 | 574.21 - 18.796 | 7.2 × 98.6 | 2352 ÷ 24 |
| 8 | 6.759 + 0.2867 | 5.614 - 10.4935 | 0.893 × 3.7 | 403.76 ÷ 0.98 |
| 9 | 926.4 + 75.72 | 208.3 - 129.26 | 2.17 × 0.83 | 66.3 ÷ 6.5 |
| 10 | 38.69 + 629.8 | 15.94 - 10.798 | 0.68 × 7.9 | 343.2 ÷ 22 |
Means, standard deviations, and gender differences for all tasks (Experiment 1).
| Task | Younger children (ages 11–12) | Older children (13–15) | Tests of gender difference (multilevel model) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beijing | Liuzhou | Beijing | Liuzhou | |||||||
| Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | |||
| Approximate arithmetic | 62.2 (20.1) | 55.7 (17.6) | 53.3 (23.8) | 51.0 (17.9) | 62.6 (15.2) | 60.4 (13.3) | 55.3 (22.8) | 54.1 (16.4) | -3.59 | |
| Mental rotation | 21.3 (8.4) | 18.3 (9.7) | 23.3 (8.0) | 19.7 (9.1) | 21.9 (9.2) | 20.2 (10.7) | 23.0 (8.4) | 18.9 (8.1) | -3.48 | |
| Word semantic processing | 27.8 (7.4) | 31.3 (7.9) | 27.6 (7.9) | 29.3 (7.2) | 29.1 (7.1) | 33.2 (6.4) | 27.3 (7.5) | 31.2 (6.4) | 3.33 | |
| Spatial working memory | 153.5 (20.5) | 154.3 (15.8) | 151.2 (24.3) | 149.8 (22.3) | 158.2 (12.4) | 152.1 (19.2) | 148.5 (27.7) | 149.1 (28.4) | 1.49 | |
| Raven’s Progressive Matrices | 19.9 (7.1) | 19.8 (6.2) | 20.2 (7.6) | 21.7 (5.9) | 18.8 (6.2) | 20.9 (5.9) | 19.7 (4.7) | 21.3 (4.5) | 1.10 | |
Correlations among all tasks (Experiment 1).
| Tasks | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Approximate arithmetic | - | |||
| 2 | Mental rotation | 0.16ˆ** | - | ||
| 3 | Word semantic processing | 0.21ˆ*** | 0.12ˆ** | - | |
| 4 | Spatial working memory | 0.31ˆ*** | 0.20ˆ*** | 0.16ˆ*** | - |
| 5 | Raven’s Progressive Matrices | 0.14ˆ** | 0.20ˆ*** | 0.12ˆ** | 0.13ˆ** |
Results from multilevel modeling showing gender differences in approximate arithmetic (Experiment 1).
| Covariate | Approximate arithmetic | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| None | –3.59 | 1.61 | |
| Mental rotation | –2.73 | 1.64 | |
| Word semantic processing | –5.02 | 1.64 | |
| Spatial working memory | –3.21 | 1.57 | |
| Raven’s Progressive Matrices | –4.02 | 1.61 | |
Means, standard deviations, and gender differences for all tasks (Experiment 2).
| Tasks | Arts | Science | Gender difference | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Males | Females | Males | Females | ||
| Approximate arithmetic | 79.9 (12.8) | 77.5 (10.2) | 81.9 (12.0) | 80.2 (9.7) | -2.11ˆ* |
| Mental rotation | 27.4 (8.0) | 24.5 (8.4) | 28.9 (9.6) | 26.3 (7.9) | -3.71ˆ*** |
| Word semantic processing | 36.2 (8.6) | 40.6 (6.4) | 36.0 (6.5) | 38.3 (6.3) | 4.95ˆ*** |
| Spatial working memory | 149.5 (27.5) | 153.8 (18.7) | 154.1 (22.6) | 154.5 (20.2) | 1.16 |
| Raven’s Progressive Matrices | 23.1 (7.4) | 23.3 (7.0) | 22.8 (6.6) | 23.8 (5.7) | 0.94 |
Correlations among all tasks (Experiment 2).
| Tasks | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Approximate arithmetic | - | |||
| 2 | Mental rotation | 0.17ˆ*** | - | ||
| 3 | Word semantic processing | 0.10ˆ* | 0.12ˆ** | - | |
| 4 | Spatial working memory | 0.18ˆ*** | 0.22ˆ*** | 0.13ˆ** | - |
| 5 | Raven’s Progressive Matrices | 0.22ˆ*** | 0.25ˆ*** | 0.24ˆ*** | 0.26ˆ*** |
Results from multilevel modeling showing gender differences in approximate arithmetic (Experiment 2).
| Covariate | Approximate arithmetic | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| None | –2.01 | 0.95 | |
| Mental rotation | –1.50 | 0.96 | |
| Word semantic processing | –2.78 | 0.97 | |
| Spatial working memory | –2.22 | 0.94 | |
| Raven’s Progressive Matrices | –2.26 | 0.93 | |