Women are better than men at recognizing living things and
men are better than women at recognizing vehicles.
That is the unanticipated result of an analysis Vanderbilt
psychologists performed on data from a series of visual recognition tasks
collected in the process of developing a new standard test for expertise in
object recognition.
“These results aren’t definitive, but they are consistent
with the following story,” said Gauthier. “Everyone is born with a general
ability to recognize objects and the capability to get really good at it.
Nearly everyone becomes expert at recognizing faces, because of their importance
for social interactions. Most people also develop expertise for recognizing
other types of objects due to their jobs, hobbies or interests. Our culture
influences which categories we become interested in, which explains the
differences between men and women.”