Hand eye coordination sex differences

Sex differences in many spatial and verbal tasks appear to reflect an inherent low-level processing bias for movement in males and objects in females. The targeting task showed a ball moving vertically towards a horizontal line. Before reaching the line, the ball disappeared behind a masking screen, requiring the participant to imagine the movement vector and identify the intersection point. For the color recognition task, the ball briefly changed color before disappearing beneath the mask and participants were required only to identify the color shade. Results showed that targeting accuracy for slow and fast moving balls was significantly better in males compared to females.

Their findings were published online recently by the European Journal of Neuroscience. Research about the differences in male and female brains is not new. However, the eye-hand coordination research by Sergio and Gorbet looks at what is happening in the brain when what the visual system is seeing is dissociated from what the hand is doing. A classic example of this is when someone is looking at a computer screen but moving a mouse that is off to the side. Each participant in the study was put into an fMRI machine so his or her brain activity could be monitored, and was given a series of increasingly-complex tasks. The study monitored brain activity just up to the moment when movement started but no further, because any movement made in the fMRI — for example, reaching for a target shown on a computer screen — would have made it difficult to get a clear picture of brain activity.

In this cross-sectional study, the qualitative and quantitative throwing performance of male and female athletes 6 to 16 years of age was analyzed. The goal of this study was to assess whether there were gender based qualitative and quantitative differences in throwing performance of young athletes, throughout three different age bands childhood, pubescence, and adolescence. Furthermore, we explored whether all components of the throwing movement are equally affected by gender differences.

The reason girls are not as good at catching as boys may have finally been explained, according to a controversial study likely to divide the sexes. In a 'surprising' finding, researchers showed that men pick up on visual motion significantly faster than women. They found that both sexes are good at reporting whether black and white bars on a screen are moving to the left or to the right. But, in comparison to men, women took about 25 to 75 per cent longer to make the determination.