Male Superiority In Spatial Ability Comes Early

As early as a few months of age, male babies begin showing superior spatial abilities to female babies. Angry feminists such as Nancy Hopkins are apt to faint with rage at these findings, but nevertheless, science must have its say.

Males typically outperform females on spatial-ability tests by age 4, especially on tasks that require mental rotation of objects perceived as three-dimensional. Yet, two studies of 3- to 5-month-olds, both published in the November Psychological Science, conclude that a substantially greater proportion of boys than girls distinguish a block arrangement from its mirror image, after having first seen the block arrangement rotated.

...Moore and Johnson showed 20 boys and 20 girls, all 5 months old, videos of a block arrangement rotating back and forth through a 240° angle. Each child sat in his or her mother’s lap as the mother kept her eyes closed. After tiring of looking at this image, infants saw alternating videos of the original block arrangement or its mirror image rotating through a 120° angle.

Video records of infants’ gaze and head movements revealed that 14 boys, or 70 percent of them, preferred looking at mirror images, compared with 9 girls, or 45 percent of them.

Quinn and Liben showed 12 boys and 12 girls, all 3 to 4 months old, a series of images of either a black number 1 or its mirror image, each drawn to appear three-dimensional and situated at a different degree of rotation. Each baby then saw presentations of both the number 1 and its mirror image in a new degree of rotation.

In the latter trials, 11 boys preferred looking at the image that they hadn’t seen before, compared with 5 girls.

It may be possible to study mental rotation in babies within the first few days after birth, Quinn says. _ScienceNews

These are fascinating findings, needing further elaboration and explication. But these two studies certainly confirm each other, and add more bricks to the cohesive structure of male superiority in spatial abilities over the life span.

Feminists all too often deny evolutionary differences--apparently out of ideological and political stances that prevent them from acknowledging even painfully apparent gender differences that may favour males. Now, under Obamanation, expect a significant increase in science/evolution-denial by well placed academics of a certain political slant (neo-leftist).

As with the carbon hysterics involved with the global warming orthodoxy, gender and race hucksters involved in human biodiversity denial cannot afford to let science have its say unhindered by their own biased political viewpoints. Obama is likely to be sympathetic to the science deniers, unfortunately.