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Reducing the motor response in haptic parallel matching eliminates the typically observed gender difference
1Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. h.vanmier@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
Experimental Brain Research
|September 18, 2015
Summary
Gender differences in haptic perception tasks may stem from egocentric bias. Reducing this bias eliminated performance differences between men and women in a bar orientation matching task.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Human Perception
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Haptic perception tasks often reveal large deviations attributed to a hand-centered egocentric reference frame.
- Previous studies indicate women exhibit greater deviations than men in haptic parallelity tasks, possibly due to higher egocentric orientation or reduced efficiency in overcoming bias.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if reducing egocentric reference frame bias eliminates gender differences in haptic parallelity tasks.
- To compare performance in a direct haptic matching task versus a haptic-visual task with reduced egocentric bias.
Main Methods:
- Sixty participants (30 men, 30 women) performed two tasks: haptic parallelity matching (HP) and haptic-visual matching (HV).
- In HP, participants used their dominant hand to match a test bar's orientation to a reference bar perceived by the non-dominant hand.
- In HV, participants verbally matched the perceived orientation of a reference bar (out of view) using a protractor, with no motor response required.
Main Results:
- Both genders performed better in the haptic-visual (HV) task compared to the haptic parallelity (HP) task.
- Significant gender differences in performance were observed exclusively in the HP task.
- No significant gender differences were found in the HV task, where egocentric bias was reduced.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the hypothesis that egocentric bias contributes to gender differences in haptic parallelity tasks.
- Reducing the egocentric bias of the hand allows women and men to perform at comparable levels.
- This suggests that differences in overcoming egocentric bias, rather than inherent orientation differences, may underlie observed gender disparities in this task.
