From: Chris Shaw Subject: Re: SOC: "nanosex" Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada Max Garcia writes: >My own feeling is that if men are more visual the reason has to do with >the nurturing. It probably all goes back to males being raised as the >dominant, aggressive, favored gender in charge. well... I'd say, given what we know about other primate behaviours, that it's simply part of being male to play rough games. Male gibbon and male chimpanzee youngsters play much more physically demanding and rough games than females of the same age. Tied in with this is the male need to be cometitive. Males care very deeply about where they are in the hierarchy. Females don't. Females tend to find value in the connections they can make with other individuals in the group. This seems to be true to some extent in most primates. >This is all visual training, imaging training, etc., that readies us >for even more active visualization as we get older. I think that this is part of it-- boys get spatial training because of the type of things they do all day are spatial. Girls, on the other hand, get a more in-depth social training. >couldn't find evidence to suggest that men are inherently >more visual than women by nature. One interesting thing that comes up in navigation studies is that men tend to prefer to navigate using some sort of map, whereas women tend to prefer to use landmarks. Men say "draw me a picture", while women say "tell me a story" (uuuh whatever). This results in interesting sex differences on similar tasks. I was speaking with a psychologist about work she had done studying nap-of-earth helicopter flight simulations. Apparently the simulated crashes occurred under different circumstances for men than women, partially as a result of different navigation techniques. >postings like this are kind of shocking. >Maximillian Garcia >Max@city.arch.wustl.edu Here's one thing that women do much better than men, by and large: Juggling 17 different things in your head at once. It's like the old joke about the husband has to make a list if there's more than 2 items to get from the store, but he's likely to lose the list on the way home. Meanwhile the wife is dictating the list, cooking dinner, doing laundry and watching the children all at the same time. My personal experience tells me I'm incapable of such mental juggling. I don't know how you would nurture this type of thing. -- Chris Shaw University of Alberta cdshaw@cs.UAlberta.ca CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !