BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1650979
No Relationship Between Gender Stereotypes and Mental Rotation in Preschool Girls
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
- 2Universitat Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
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Gender stereotypes about spatial ability have been proposed as a contributing factor to the gender gap in STEM. This goal of this study was to investigate whether implicit gender stereotypes regarding spatial ability are associated with mental rotation (MR) performance in preschool-aged girls, and whether visuospatial working memory (VSWM) plays a moderating role. Fifty-two girls aged 5 to 6.75 years completed a chronometric MR task, a computerized Corsi block-tapping task (assessing VSWM), and a single-target Implicit Association Test measuring associations between gender and toys used in spatial play. Participants did not show significant implicit stereotypes favoring either gender. Contrary to our hypotheses, no evidence for a relationship between implicit stereotypes and MR response times was found. Unexpectedly, stronger implicit associations linking boys with spatial ability were associated with higher MR accuracy. VSWM was positively correlated with both MR accuracy and implicit stereotype scores. Since the hypothesized relationship between implicit stereotypes and MR was not observed, a potential moderation through VSWM was not examined. Our findings diverge from prior research suggesting that stereotype-consistent associations in girls are linked to lower spatial task performance. Taken together, the results cast doubt on the robustness of implicit gender stereotypes about spatial ability in early childhood and highlight the complexity of their potential impact on spatial cognition. Further research is needed to clarify under what conditions, if any, such stereotypes affect performance in young children.
Keywords: Spatial Ability, Gender stereotypes, human sex differences, preschool, Children, mental rotation
Received: 20 Jun 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ebert, Jost and Jansen. 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: W. Miro Ebert, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
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