Numerical cognition
Why do women and men compare two-digit numbers differently?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Women were more thrown off than men when the tens and units digits of two numbers pointed in opposite directions, and this difference was explained by how people navigated, not by their hormone levels.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Men and naturally cycling women tested once (women in the mid-luteal phase) on a two-digit number comparison task that manipulated unit-decade compatibility and vertical spacing, plus a 3-D virtual navigation task and salivary hormone measures; sex differences, hormone links and a mediation by navigation strategy were tested with mixed models.
- N
- N=83 · After exclusions, 42 men and 41 women were analysed; hormone values were missing for four participants.
- Population
- Healthy, right-handed, IQ- and age-matched young adults aged 18 to 35 at the University of Salzburg; women not using hormonal contraception
- Outcome
- Unit-decade compatibility effect (incompatible minus compatible) in reaction time and error rate; landmark vs. distance strategy effect in navigation time; salivary estradiol, progesterone and testosterone
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Key findings
Women made more errors than men overall, mainly on incompatible pairs, giving them a larger compatibility effect in errors (5.49% vs. 3.10%), but there was no sex difference in reaction times. Closely spaced numbers produced a larger compatibility effect in reaction time for everyone, and spacing did not interact with sex. Individual hormone levels did not predict the error compatibility effect, and the progesterone-to-testosterone ratio showed only a small link that did not explain the sex difference. People who did relatively better with landmark directions had larger compatibility effects, and navigation strategy statistically mediated the sex difference.
Methodology
Men and women matched for age and IQ decided which of two vertically stacked two-digit numbers was larger, with some pairs 'compatible' (the larger number also had the larger units digit) and some 'incompatible', and with the numbers placed either close together or far apart. The same people navigated virtual environments using directions based either on landmarks or on distances, and gave saliva samples for hormone measurement. Women were all tested in the high-progesterone luteal phase.
Limitations
Because the design is correlational, the mediation analysis cannot show that navigation style causes number-processing style; both may reflect a shared tendency towards local or global processing. The sex difference appeared only in errors, not in reaction times, unlike most earlier studies, and the authors acknowledge limited power to detect a sex-by-spacing interaction. Women were tested only in the luteal phase, so cycle effects cannot be assessed, and the navigation results they rely on were reported in an unpublished paper. The text is also inconsistent about whether the hormone-ratio effect was in reaction times or errors.
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