Sex Differences in Processing Movement vs Objects Figure 5. Data shown in the upper panel are the mean reaction times (±SEM) when the dual attention task required a targeting response. Data in the lower panels are the mean reaction times (6SEM) when the task required a color recognition choice. Data shown are for the 19 males and 27 females tested in Experiment 3. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032238.g005 involved in the decision making process as part of the mirror neuron system (MNS) [54–55]. However, the reaction time results did not correlate with target or color accuracy. In addition, there was no significant sex difference in reaction time in any of the conditions studied, in spite of studies showing strong sex differences in MNS activation during the perception of movement [56–58]. Thus, while it appears that ball movement is an embodied cognition in both the targeting and color recognition tasks, it constitutes a channel of information that does not influence perceptual accuracy in either task. One of the limitations of this study regarding the hypothesized sex-related processing bias is that the color recognition task was embedded within ball movement. To better address this issue, further studies are needed that employ complimentary object and movement analysis tasks, but eliminate movement within the object analysis task. Future studies are also required to define the degree to which the sex differences in the EVITA task relate to performance on higher level cognitive tasks such as mental rotations and verbal fluency. The question of video game experience as a contributor to the present findings can also be raised since the EVITA task employs elemental skills that are inherent to video games requiring estimation of object movement vectors. Studies show that males spend more time than females playing these types of games, and that training in video games can improve female performance on a mental rotation tasks [59–60]. We did not control for video game experience in the present experiments, something that should be assessed in future experiments. However, we expect an effect of video game experience on EVITA task performance to be relatively small for several reasons. First, numerous targeting studies showing large sex differences favoring males have been reported between 1933 and 1986 [6], which predate the widespread use of video games. Second, the regular speed and predictable ball movement within the EVITA environment is quite different from the complexity and speed of the video game experience. Finally, we found that training 5 males and 5 females in the EVITA targeting task 4 times over a two-week period improved performance in both sexes by less than five percent (unpublished studies). PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 8 March 2012 | Volume 7 | Issue 3 | e32238