15 women and 24 men were compared on a visual orienting task requiring observers to set a luminous line to a vertical position while viewing from a laterally tilted body position. No visible frame of reference was available. Women made no significant error as a group, while the men's average settings deviated approximately 7° from vertical, in the same direction as body tilt. This result reverses the direction of sex differences usually reported on orienting tasks and specifies a limitation on the usefulness of the “field dependence” concept as a predictor of comparative spatial performances of men and women.
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