FIGURE 15.4 Tests of spatial skills Gender differences vary according to the type of task. Boys tend to perform better than girls do on tasks that involve mental rotation, such as the one in (a), in which children have to determine which response matches the standard. In contrast, gender differences are small or nonexistent on tasks like that in (b), which requires children to find the simple geometric figure on the left embedded in the adjoining complex figure. (Adapted from Linn & Peterson, 1985)