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Numerous studies have established that, compared to their male counterparts, more female individuals fail the water-level task by representing the orientation of the water surface as oblique. In order to complement this information with indicators of the processing taking place during performance, the present experiment examined the response times of adolescents who completed a series of trials prior to indicating whether they knew about the involved physical invariance. The results showed that, overall, more boys than girls displayed this knowledge which increased response accuracy and speed, irrespective of gender and of whether the participants had to draw the position of the water surface or to judge the correctness of the position shown to them. An exception to this pattern was the relatively low response times among unknowledgeable girls who had to draw water levels. It may be that, among the participants lacking knowledge of invariance, boys sought to find a rule to solve the task, whereas girls readily applied an incorrect rule. Independent from the conceptual dimension of invariance knowledge however, other aspects of the results suggested that girls may experience some difficulties of a perceptual nature when the horizontal axis has to be located within a frame.
