Distracting information, motor performance and sex differences

Abstract

It is often argued that, in general, men are superior to women in perceptual motor skills (for example, car driving). Extensive reviews of the relevant literature do not give convincing evidence of sex differences in manual dexterity¹ or motor skills in general². However, in the studies reported here, variables have been isolated which demonstrate that sex differences do exist in two perceptual motor tasks. These studies showed that females are adversely affected by irrelevant stimuli while performing tasks permitting freedom in movements but perform as well as males when the movement is stereotyped.