The influence of the design of mental rotation trials on performance and possible differences between sexes: A theoretical review and experimental investigation

In summary, we have reviewed and experimentally investigated the effect of the trial design on sex differences in mental rotation performance. The fact that sex differences vary strongly between different test versions has often been neglected in the search for explanations. Comparing the test versions has uncovered parameters of the trial designs, which were then evaluated experimentally. The results show that the overall performance depends on these parameters of the trial design. We, however, could not evaluate their effect on sex differences as we did not observe meaningful sex differences likely due to demographic differences in our sample.