Gist vs. detail: The principle of cognitive sex differences?

Sex differences in classical tasks have been related to the use of different cognitive strategies. Since these strategies show large similarities across tasks, we suggest a common fundamental principle of strategy dissociation underlying the observed sex differences: gist vs. detail. Across tasks, men focus on global stimulus aspects that help them to get an overview of the situation, while women focus on local stimulus aspects that help them remember a situation as specifically and detailed as possible. For example, men tend to use a "gestalt" approach in spatial tasks, focus on distal landmarks and absolute directions during navigation and do not attend the specific identity of objects in the object-location task. Women use a strategy of verbalization in spatial tasks, focus on local landmarks and egocentric directions and use more elaborative rehearsal during memory tasks. The gist vs. detail principle has first been suggested by the Larry Cahill for emotional memory and could be confirmed by myself for a number comparison task. In the proposed research project we want to address the question, whether this principle is actually applicable across tasks. Therefore we modify four classical tasks evoking robust sex differences (two favouring men, two favouring women): mental rotation, virtual navigation, word recognition and face recognition. We produce different stimulus categories by varying the global and local aspects of these stimuli. The behavioural (reaction time and error rate) data will be combined with eye tracking and fMRI to demonstrate that the behavioural differences go in hand with differential attentional foci and neural processing. Across tasks, women`s performance should impair with reduction of local stimulus aspects, while men`s performances should impair with reduction of global stimulus aspects. Women should look longer on details, while men should attend the stimuli as a whole. Since global stimulus aspects are processed in the right hemisphere, while local aspects are processed in the left hemisphere, we expect stronger right lateralized processing in men and stronger left lateralized processing in women. Additionally, we want to address the related question, whether these differences are modulated by inter- and intraindividual changes in sex hormone levels, as they occur in women throughout the menstrual cycle. Therefore we want to test only women, who do not use hormonal contraceptives, assess their hormonal status and evaluate sex hormone levels from saliva samples.