Gender differences have been investigated in almost all cognitive domains (e.g., perception, memory, thought, mental imagery) but one of the most established phenomena consists in the male advantage in visuo-spatial abilities. Several interpretations have been put forward as possible account for this effect. For example, genetic complement, sex hormones as well as socio-cultural mechanisms have all been proposed as critical factors.

Although the magnitude and consistency of this phenomena have been questioned, recent meta-analyses of nearly 50 years of research provided convincing evidence that gender differences in spatial abilities do exist even if they are modulated by a number of critical variables. Essentially, the magnitude of this effect has been shown to be task-dependent thus suggesting that spatial ability must be addressed as a collection of different skills which entail different type of visuo-spatial processing or mechanisms rather than as a unitary concept. For example, Linn and Petersen (1985) proposed a distinction between spatial perception, mental rotation and spatial visualization tests, suggesting that a male advantage is reliable but limited to the first two categories. Voyer et al. (1995) replicated these results specifying that gender differences are highly significant in mental rotation and transformation of mental images, relevant but less consistent in spatial perception, and highly variable in spatial visualization tests. The importance of distinguishing between different components of visuo-spatial skills is also strengthened by the fact that gender differences seem to emerge at different age according to the specific task investigated.

Following a similar perspective, Paivio and Clark (1991) suggested that the critical variable predicting gender differences in visuo-spatial abilities is the static versus dynamic nature of mental images required by the tasks. For example, males show a better performance in tasks requiring transformation or manipulation of mental images while females excel in using static images and in judging or recalling visual characteristic of images. The same gender-related effect in visuo-spatial processing has been investigated by Harris (1978) who reported a clear male advantage in visuo-spatial dynamic tasks only.

The necessity to distinguish between different type of processes (i.e., active processing and passive storage) has been recently suggested in theories of visuo-spatial working memory. According to Cornoldi (1995), passive storage and active processing lie along a continuum influenced by the amount of coordination, manipulation, and/or integration of information that is necessary to perform the task; in this view, a passive storage task requires to recall information in exactly the same format as they have been previously memorised (e.g., memory for spatial position), whereas an active elaboration task requires, to different extents, to manipulate mental images (e.g., mental rotation) or to integrate different information (e.g., to follow sequential instructions to generate mental images).

The importance of defining the different tasks in terms of the amount of active processing required has been supported by several studies on individual differences in visuo-spatial abilities. This effect has been shown with reference to the reduced visuo-spatial processing capacity in elderly people, in children up to 7–8 years old, as well as in blind people. All these studies indicate that people showing a reduced performance in visuo-spatial tasks are sensitive to the amount of active processing required, regardless of the specific nature of their deficits: (a) decrease of cognitive abilities due to normal ageing; (b) absence of visual perception (the “preferred modality for the manipulation of visuo-spatial images”;) due to congenital blindness; (c) immature visuo-spatial abilities which preclude a functional manipulation of mental images.

The present study has been designed in order to investigate gender differences in passive and active visuo-spatial processing, testing the hypothesis that male superiority in visuo-spatial abilities is limited, or mainly confined, to tasks requiring active processing, as suggested by Paivio and Clark (1991). To this purpose, we presented male and female subjects with passive and active visuo-spatial tasks (Experiment 1 and 2) ruling out the possibility that females weakness in active processing simply reflects an overall and unspecific limitation in the system capacity (Experiment 3). For both active and passive tasks we used a methodology originally developed by Kerr (1987) requiring the participants to remember the positions of various targets (passive task) or to follow pathways of different lengths (active task) in matrices of variable complexities.

The experimental design here adopted allows the investigation of people’s performance when varying visuo-spatial processing requirements. A previous study designed to investigate the effect of different types of visuo-spatial processing in blind people has highlighted the importance of both type of matrix and type of process in affecting subjects’ performance. In fact, blind people have shown selective difficulties in the active task that were maximised when using three-dimensional (3D) matrices. It has been argued that the use of 3D matrices implies some sort of active integration: scanning of 3D images requires a continuing shift of perspective and/or the integration of different perspectives.
In the present experiment, the amount of active processing required is modulated by using different matrices (two-dimensional, 2D, or three-dimensional, 3D) and by varying the nature of the task (passive or active). Following the hypothesis of Paivio and Clark (1991), we expect that male advantage will be clearly observed in the active tasks and, to a minor extent, in the passive tasks when 3D matrices are involved.