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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (212926)	1/13/2007 9:04:40 PM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 281500

Hen pecking is like pornography, it's hard to define but he knows it when he sees it. <whether it's hen-pecking to try to teach him to use a map and navigate while I am driving. He said, not hen-pecking per se, but extreme pressure. > That doesn't seem like hen-pecking. He also might be smart enough to say it's not hen-pecking even if he believes it is. Suppose she asks .... Does this dress make me look fat? There are truthful answers that should not be stated. jttmab

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (212926)	1/14/2007 3:31:52 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

It's not that NO women can do spatial orientation. Yes, I am sure. It just seems logical to me that women, who have been the gatherers since before history, would have a special ability to remember where the various seasonal items were so they could be gathered a year later. Especially the women of cultures that were either nomadic, or at least moved from place to place throughout the year. This would be the ability to form a mental map of their surroundings, a more or less flat map. Women are well known to excel at remembering faces, and identifying facial expressions, which also seems spatial to me. Mentally rotating objects is a different ability. At any rate, when I took aptitude tests to get a job at Exxon Refinery (Baton Rouge), they told me I scored the highest of anybody who had ever taken that test, male or female. Not surprising since my father has excellent spatial ability, and can do things like work on engines in the dark, just by feel. He probably could have scored higher than me, except for the fact that he's not very good at abstract reasoning so probably couldn't understand the questions as well as me. Tests, you see, depend heavily on test-taking skills, including verbal skills, writing skills, and the ability to sit still and concentrate, all of which women have better than men. In the real world, we see that men excel at building things, while women excel at the creation of intricate designs using looms, like tapestries and carpets. Hmmmm, just a little googling suggests I am right. >>Sex ID - Spatial ability It's probably fair to say that we don't spend much time thinking about the way we view the world around us. But some scientists conduct detailed studies of how accurately we judge space – our spatial abilities – with paper and pencil tests. The Sex ID test included similar tests – the angles, 3D shapes and spot the difference tasks. Studies show that, on average, men are better than women at mentally rotating pictures of three dimensional objects (the 3D shapes task) or judging the slope of a line (the angles task). But scientists note that women outperform men at other tasks. For example, women are more likely to spot which of a group of objects has been moved to a new position (the spot the difference task). It's not fully known why men and women perform differently on spatial tasks. Studies have concluded that men tend to pay more attention to the way their surroundings are laid out, which may explain why they generally score better on tasks like 3D shapes and angles. Researchers have also found that, on average, men are better at finding compass orientations and rely on mental images of three dimensional spaces to find their way. Women were more likely to notice landmarks, which could be linked to their higher scores on the spot the difference task. Research has shown that women are more likely to use memorised routes and landmarks to stay on track. Dr Marcia Collaer, a behavioural neuroscientist at Middlebury College in Vermont, says that the link between the angles task and navigation ability is not backed up with empirical evidence, but it is worth considering. Modern cavemen Scientists try to come up with logical explanations for these puzzling results. One theory is that modern humans are still very similar to their prehistoric ancestors. In early times men spent lots of time hunting in unfamiliar territory where landmarks were less useful. Women, on the other hand, spent more time close to home foraging for food and they may have relied more on landmarks to find their way around. Testosterone and spatial ability It's also thought that the male sex hormone testosterone plays a role in spatial ability. One finding that supports this theory is that women with above average levels of testosterone in their body perform better at mental rotation tasks than women with average levels of testosterone. Most scientists think there's no real difference between men and women when it comes to total intelligence (commonly called IQ). It's just possible that our brains have evolved separately to meet the demands of our environment. bbc.co.uk