In intelligence testing, males tend to score better on which type of task?

• A. Verbal tasks
• B. Visual-spatial ability
• C. Memory for faces
• D. Processing speed

Answer: (B)

Visual-spatial ability is the cognitive skill that involves judging spatial relationships and manipulating mental images. Across many intelligence studies, males tend to outperform females on tasks requiring mental rotation, spatial perception, and navigation, which creates a relatively consistent average advantage in visuospatial tasks. Verbal tasks rely more on language processing and often show smaller or inconsistent gender differences, memory for faces can vary by study and isn’t as robust a difference, and processing speed differences are small and not clearly in favor of males. So the most reliably observed difference is in visual-spatial tasks, making that the best answer.