Investigating sex differences in the perception of biological motion associated with visuospatial decision-making movement accuracy

The ability to perceive biological motion using point-light displays allows for differentiation in the evaluation of human movement. The purpose of the study was to examine sex differences in cognitive processing based upon a visuospatial decision-making accuracy task that utilized the perception of biological motion associated with a specific movement in ballet. The participants were 33 males and 36 females, Estonian citizens aged between 18 and 27 years. The ELITE Biomech 2002 movement analysis apparatus was used to generate point-light stimuli. The task involved distinguishing between point-light stimuli representations of digital video footage of a correct and incorrect turn from fifth position in ballet. Repeated measures Multivariate Analysis of Variance results revealed no significant differences between male and female decision-making accuracy scores. This result suggests that in relation to this type of specific visuospatial processing task it may be that social factors may also influence sex specific genetic predispositions associated with visuospatial ability