Sex differences in the strategies of haptic object memory in early adulthood

Everyday life inevitably involves touch. Encoding, recalling, and recognizing objects by touch requires haptic object memory, which is thought to rely on both verbal and visual capabilities. This raises the question of whether performance or strategies used to solve haptic memory tasks are sex-dependent. We assessed 45 healthy young adults (27 females, 18 males; aged 18-36 years) with repeated measurements. Participants were asked to encode ten everyday objects while blindfolded and allowed to explore them by touch. After a five-minute delay, participants were asked to recall as many objects as possible and subsequently to recognize the objects from a set of five conceptually identical but perceptually different alternatives with their eyes open. Regardless of whether participants correctly identified the object, they were then allowed to touch it. Performance did not differ between women and men in all memory phases. However, men appeared to rely less on verbal memory and instead used mental rotation as a compensatory strategy during encoding. Women who in this sample showed better verbal memory performance, did not require such backup strategies for encoding. During the recognition task, the results suggest that men may have relied on mental rotation, whereas women may have favored verbal strategies. These findings indicate a tendency toward different strategy preferences rather than fixed sex-specific mechanisms. However, given the modest sample size, these findings should be interpreted cautiously and warrant replication in larger cohorts. Nonetheless, we conclude that when task demands increase, men may compensate by engaging mental object rotation.