Weird that a group of people who spend their youth being told that they're naturally bad at math and critical reasoning have hangups when given these tests. Only explanation is that their doubters were right.
"The experiment was done on 3- to 4-month-old infants using a 2D mental rotation task. They used a preference apparatus that consists of observing during how much time the infant is looking at the stimulus. They started by familiarizing the participants with the number "1" and its rotations. Then they showed them a picture of a "1" rotated and its mirror image. The study showed that males are more interested by the mirror image. Females are equally interested by the "1" rotated and its mirror image. That means that males and females process mental rotation differently."
> Two experiments showed that, as predicted, the performance of 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 192) was impaired by exposure to information that associated success in the task at hand with membership in a certain social group (e.g., "boys are good at this game"), regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.
3- to 4-months old is quite a bit younger than 4 to 7 years. I doubt that any kind of group membership awareness can affect the things a baby looks at, especially when the task is so abstract. (Do you think anyone is ever indoctrinated to think that "boys do not look at rotated objects" or some such?)
The study you cite has no bearing on the effect you seem to dispute.
Edit: If it makes you feel better, the Wikipedia page on mental rotation also mentions a different experiment, where they measured reaction times of adults: "Also it was found that the male athletes in the experiment were faster than females, but male and female musicians showed no significant difference in reaction time." So apparently the right kind of training can eliminate the difference.
I was not disputing the effect you brought up - only questioning its relevance.
The study I linked is one that seems more relevant to the topic at hand - certainly more relevant to the point I was trying to make originally.
About your edit: there is no need to try to make me feel better. Assuming you understand what makes me tick well enough to be able to do so is a common mistake (not with me specifically, but in general) that leads to the kind of cross-talk we're seeing here.
I didn't bring up the effect, there are multiple people replying to you here. Not paying attention who you are talking to is a common mistake that leads to the kind of cross-talk we are seeing here ;)
As for disputing the relevance of the effect, that wasn't really clear from your brief comment. I'd say that a test of a mental capacity that shows natural gender differences before nurture had a chance to kick in does invalidate HelloWorldInWS's argument that there can't possibly be a biological effect that makes men (or women) better at any particular mental task.
Your comment "Weird that a group of people who spend their youth being told that they're naturally bad at math and critical reasoning have hangups when given these tests. Only explanation is that their doubters were right." is also not terribly relevant, because
- mental rotation ability differs even for babies
- IQ tests are calibrated so that the average is 100, regardless of gender. So women can't actually perform worse than men. It's just that the variance is higher, which means that men are more likely to be very smart or very dumb, while women are more likely to be of average intelligence. (The explanation I've heard is that having only one X chromosome gives genes there outsized influence in men.)
- the abstract of the linked study on the Cognitive Reflection Test mentions that both genders expected their performance to be better than it actually was, so lack of self-confidence was probably not an issue.
I'm sorry how my edit came across to you, I actually just wanted to mention it because it seems important to know that even if there is some mental difference contributing to the current gender distribution in tech, it might still be possible to even it out by practicing the relevant skill.
> Not paying attention who you are talking to is a common mistake that leads to the kind of cross-talk we are seeing here ;)
I apologize! :)
And yes, I have a tendancy to be brief and sarcastic rather than clear, to the detriment of my discussions.
I will not argue that there are no measurable cognitive differences between any given classifiable group of people. I will argue that there is nothing shown that can account for the 80/20 gender split we see today in tech.
However, I do believe that societal and cultural pressures, in the form of stereotyping and prejudice, can cause that split. This argument is what I was alluding to, and what I was attempting to support with my link.