Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Male advantage on spatial tasks may be explained in part by gender stereotypes (Nash 1975). The current studyinvestigated the effect of awareness of sex differences in mental rotation on mental rotation (MR) performance. We hypothe-sized that students with negative stereotypes would score significantly lower than students who were unaware or held positivestereotypes. Participants – 285 undergraduates — completed the Shepard & Metzler (1971) MR task followed by a short onlinesurvey. Preliminary analysis revealed a significant sex difference in mental rotation performance F (1, 256) = 9.68, p=. 002.There was no main effect of awareness on MR performance. Interestingly, there was a significant interaction between sex andawareness on MR performance, F (1,256) =6.77, p=. 010. Results on the role of awareness in cognitive strategy selectionwill be presented. By understanding gender stereotypes associated with spatial ability, we can reduce the gender gap found inSTEM disciplines.