Gender Differences in Haptic Parallelity Matching

Previous studies have reported gender differences in performance when two bars have to be set parallel to each other haptically, with females having significantly larger deviations than males. Recent results comparing male participants with and without action video game experience showed that the former performed significantly better than the latter in the aforementioned haptic parallelity task. Considering that males more often engage in action video gaming, the observed performance differences between male and female participants might be related to gaming experience rather than gender. This was investigated in the current study by comparing haptic parallelity performance in males with action video gaming experience and in males and females without this experience. The results showed that male participants with as well as without action video gaming experience performed significantly better than female participants. These results suggest that differences in haptic parallelity matching between males and females seem to be related to gender, rather than action video gaming experience. When performing the parallelity task visually, no significant differences were found between the three groups, corroborating earlier hypotheses that women are less able to ignore the bias of the egocentric hand-centered reference frame than men when haptically paralleling orientations.

既往研究已报道，在需通过触觉将两根杆调整至彼此平行的任务中，受试者的表现存在性别差异——女性受试者的偏差幅度显著高于男性。近期一项对比有动作电子游戏游玩经验与无该经验的男性受试者的研究结果显示，在前述触觉平行性任务（haptic parallelity task）中，有经验的男性受试者表现显著优于无经验者。鉴于男性通常更常接触动作电子游戏，此前观察到的男女受试者间的表现差异，可能与游戏游玩经验相关，而非性别本身。本研究通过对比有动作电子游戏游玩经验的男性，以及无该经验的男性与女性受试者的触觉平行性表现，对这一推论展开了验证。研究结果显示，无论是否有动作电子游戏游玩经验，男性受试者的表现均显著优于女性受试者。上述结果表明，男女受试者在触觉平行匹配任务中的表现差异，似乎与性别相关，而非动作电子游戏游玩经验。当以视觉方式完成平行性任务时，三组受试者间未出现显著差异，这佐证了此前的假说：在触觉调整方向平行性的过程中，女性相较于男性更难以忽略以自我为中心的手部参考框架（egocentric hand-centered reference frame）所带来的偏差。