Sex differences in the relation between math performance, spatial skills, and attitudes

Sex differences have been previously found in cognitive and affective predictors of math achievement, including spatial skills and math attitudes. It is important to determine whether there are sex differences not only in the predictors themselves, but also in the nature of their relation to math achievement. The present paper examined spatial skills and math attitudes as predictors of curriculum-based measures of math performance in middle-school students, specifically comparing the patterns of these predictive relations for boys and girls. The results of the current study showed that, despite similar levels of math performance for boys and girls, the significance of particular predictors varied as a function of sex. Specifically, spatial skills predicted math performance in boys, but not in girls. We suggest that sex differences in spatial reasoning in conjunction with the differential involvement of spatial reasoning in math problem solving may lead to later sex differences in math outcomes.

Research highlights
► We tested spatial skills and math attitudes as predictors of math achievement.
► Middle-school boys and girls had similar levels of math performance.
► However, the relation between predictors and math outcomes varied for the groups.
► Math attitudes showed a stronger relation to performance in girls than in boys.
► Spatial skills predicted math performance in boys, but not in girls.