Comparable 3D mental rotation for male and female when faces stimuli were applied

Considerable evidence indicates that women outperform men in face recognition, whereas numerous studies show that men surpass women in three-dimensional (3D) mental rotation ability. This study integrates these two lines of research to examine gender differences in face recognition tasks that require 3D mental rotation. In three experiments, participants were asked to recognize profile, silhouette, and negative faces, respectively. Experiment 1 established a baseline performance condition in which participants could apply both 3D information and other facial cues, such as texture and features. Experiment 2, participants could no longer retrive these pictorial cues and were required to recognize faces based merely on their 3D structure. Experiment 3 further disrupted 3D structural perception by employing negative face images. Results showed that male and female participants performed equally well across the three experiments. Males did not outperform females in 3D mental rotation when recognizing face stimuli. In contrast, females show superior performance to males in 3D mental rotation tasks involving face images in some conditions, i.e. females outperformed males in recognizing male faces (Exp 1) and Caucasian male faces (Exp 2). The present findings align with converging evidence indicating that gender differences in mental rotation arise from the interaction between neural network organization, stimulus characteristics, and hormonal modulation rather than reflecting a fixed cognitive superiority. This integrative perspective challenges the generalizability of the traditional male advantage in mental rotation and highlights the importance of socially meaningful stimuli, such as faces, in 3D mental representation.