Are there cognitive tasks that women are especially good at relative to men, and are their cognitive tasks that men are especially good at relative to women?

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Yes, we found some tasks that women were especially good at relative to men, and some that men were especially good at relative to women. However, not all differences were in line with predictions based on prior literature, and some depended on the type of task we used. 

It's important to note that any such observed gender differences do not imply an innate gender differences, since the differences might be caused by a variety of factors, including experience, interest levels, motivation, opportunities, or the ways that people of different genders are socialized.

Verbal tasks

Regarding verbal tasks, there were tasks on which women performed better than men and tasks on which men performed better than women. 

Women on average outperformed men on tests that require word generation, such as a verbal fluency task , (i.e., listing as many words as you can meeting certain criteria in a short period of time; r = 0.11 in favor or women, p = 0.02), a linking words test (i.e., coming up with one word that links two concepts together; r = 0.08, p = 0.10 [non-significant]), and word unscrambles (i.e., coming up with words that can be constructed from four presented letters; r = 0.06, p = 0.21 [a positive correlation but not statistically significant]). 

On the other hand, men on average outperformed women on vocabulary tests (one in which the task was to recognize either synonym or antonym of a given word and another where the task was to identify words that are closest in meaning to each other; r = 0.18 in favor of men, p < 0.001) and analogy test (i.e., recognizing the relationship between the two pair of words; r = 0.18 in favor of men, p < 0.001). 

Processing speed

Regarding processing speed, the results also depended on the test. For example, there were no differences between men and women on a processing speed test (e.g., finding the color that is the most repeated across all shown shapes as fast as possible as well as more complex variations of this; r = 0.03, p = 0.52), while men performed somewhat better than women on the digit-symbol coding test in which the task was to figure out which symbol goes with the number that was displayed (see below the sample task from both tests; r = 0.20 in favor of men, p < 0.001 ).

Processing speed test (no difference):

Digit-symbol coding (men performed better than women):

Numerical tasks

Men outperformed women on average. on each of the seven numerical tasks that we had in our battery, and the biggest difference was on a test that consisted of 15 math problems (r = 0.42 in favor of men, p < 0.001) and on our probabilistic reasoning test (r = 0.37 in favor of men, p < 0.001). 

Spatial tasks

Spatial tasks typically require people to imagine manipulating certain objects in space and answering questions regarding those manipulations (e.g., rotations, foldings etc.). In our sample, men outperformed women on these types of tasks on average, with the difference being highest on the mental rotations test (i.e., mentally rotating a set of cubes; r = 0.37 in favor of men, p < 0.001) and the paper-folding test (i.e., imagining how paper would look like after folding it multiple times and piercing through it; r = 0.31 in favor of men, p < 0.001). See below the sample task from both tests.

Mental rotations:

Paper folding test:

In sum, in our sample, men performed better than women on numerical and spatial tasks, and women performed better than men on tasks involving generation of words (but not other verbals tasks). Results were less clear for processing speed tasks, differing depending on the task used.

What do the other studies say?

Studies have found that women tend to outperform men in verbal abilities, particularly in speech production and verbal fluency (Hyde & Linn, 1988; Barel & Tzischinsky, 2018), while men show a moderate advantage in spatial abilities, especially in 3D mental rotation tasks (Hyde, 2016; Kaufman, 2007; Barel & Tzischinsky, 2018). Gender differences in mathematical abilities have been found to be minimal/non-existent (e.g., Hyde, 2016) to small (e.g., Reinhold et al., 2020) depending on the study, while processing speed has been found to favor women (Siedlecki et al., 2019; Maitland et al., 2000). Our findings are, thus, in line with general literature regarding gender differences in verbal fluency (especially tasks related to word generation) and spatial abilities, but not regarding numerical abilities and processing speed. 

Takeaways

• On average, women appear to perform better, relative to men, at verbal tasks related to word production, while men appear to outperform women on spatial tasks. It's unclear, however, why these differences occur. 

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