BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1639086
A Large-Scale Study of Academic Specialization and Sex Effects on Corsi Block Performance
Provisionally accepted
- Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russia
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This study investigated the relationship between sex, educational specialization (STEM vs. non-STEM), and performance on the Corsi block-tapping task. Behavioural outcomes included total number of correct responses, mean reaction time (RT), and mean RT for correct responses. The sample comprised 5,455 first-year Russian university students (Mean age = 18.5; 62% female). Data were analyzed using rank-based ANOVA and hierarchical linear regression models. On average, male students outperformed females in terms of both accuracy and response speed, while STEM students achieved higher scores than non-STEM students but did not differ in RT. Notably, sex differences in the number of correct responses disappeared within educational groups, whereas sex differences in RT persisted regardless of educational specialization. Regression analysis revealed that mean RT (correct), age, sex, and educational specialization together explained approximately 20% of the variance in performance accuracy. The predictive contribution of educational specialization exceeded that of sex, while the interaction between these variables was not significant. These findings suggest that while both educational specialization and sex contribute to individual differences in visuospatial working memory performance, educational specialization emerges as a slightly more influential predictor of accuracy, particularly in the number of correct responses. In contrast, reaction time appears to be more consistently associated with sex-related differences, irrespective of educational specialization. The results highlight the importance of considering both cognitive and contextual factors in the assessment of spatial working memory.
Keywords: Corsi block-tapping task, visuospatial working memory, stem education, Reaction Time, sex differences, Educational specialization
Received: 01 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Malykh, Pavlova, Malykh, Adamovich and Tikhomirova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sergey Malykh, Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russia
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