Drawing from Memory

[differenceblog]

Last month, we looked at Feng et al's (2007) research that suggested that player first-person shooter video games could improve performance in a mental rotation task - especially in women. Ferguson et al (2007), also published last month, found that men's and women's abilities to draw "masculine" and "feminine" object exemplars seemed to vary

Comments

[poeticalpanther]

That's because "math is hard"; we all know women can't handle complex mathematical concepts, like numbers of parts amounting to more than (gasp) three!

[differenceblog]

But can they read scratch tickets?

[poeticalpanther]

LOL...that one seems like an equal-opportunity bit of stupid. :)

[differenceblog]

btw, I mentioned that one to dabunny last night, and he was ashamed for all of us. Thanks for pointing it out.

[differenceblog]

I'm having trouble not relating this to dropping your trousers to count to 21. Oi. Anyway.

I guess I'm picturing "revolver" exemplars and "brassiere" exemplars, and noticing the much greater variation that falls within the category "brassiere." Back when I wore those things on a regular basis, I owned front-closure, back-closure, underwire, sports bras (both dual-strap and sport-back), strapless, and backless examples. Actually, I still own some of them -- I'm sentimental. However, my father collected guns a bit, and the main functional differences I can think of between revolvers is the length of the barrel and the fact that some of my father's revolvers had five chambers while some had six. The category "pistol" seems more congruent with "brassiere" than "revolver".

Video-game controller, on the other hand, feels fairly congruent. Did participants draw a joystick, a keyboard, a Wii controller, and a Playstation controller?

[astrogeek01]

I assume they asked for detail in the drawings. I mean, otherwise I'd draw stick-figure like things. ;) And I'm good at drawing. I could, if I wanted to, draw a very nice complete gun (yay for playing Shadowrun all those years). I think I'd have a harder time with a bike, frankly.

But a bra? I mean, there's really not much to it. The ones I wear (if I do) are sports bras and don't have fiddly bits. And a compact? I mean... those are just round, right? Or at most square with round things in them?