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Women Need Larger Screens for Desktop Navigation?
Mac of Macistan writes "In a recent
article in the New Scientist, Microsoft's R&D claims that women have a harder time navigating the desktop because their spatial abilities are roughly 20% lower than men's abilities. Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."
by the way... that was sarcasm if you didn't notice...
keep telling me that size doesn't matter!?!
Just another day in Paradise
we don't ask for directions
are all very well, but don't you think the few women who DO use PCs are in the almost-like-a-man range of spatial abilities?
But widescreen will make my butt look bigger!!!
*wail*
Mod early, mod often.
"Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."
Uh... yea. Because Linux and women go together like peanut butter and chocolate.
From the article: "Women who navigate around 3D computer-generated environments for a living - or even for fun - are having their style cramped by ultra-narrow computer displays and graphics software that favours men." This has everything to do with 3D games and nothing to do with the deskstop.
This is not about 2D desktop navigation, but about orientation in a 3D environemnt such as a computer game or a 3d design program. It appears be that the restricted field of vision with a small screen makes it hard for women to build a mental map of the enviroment and locate themselves within it.
The arcticle speculates that this may be due to evolutionary reasons; men are on average better at spatial-awareness for navigation when hunting, while women wouldn't have needed such skills looking after the home camp.
Well, that would explain why most men don't stop and ask for directions, eh?
Wider screens and more realistic 3D animations, they say, will boost women's spatial orientation and 3D map-reading skills to match those of their male counterparts.
Heck, this'll boost anyone's spatial orientation.
Women, they found, find it easier to get their bearings when this animation is smooth and realistic, rather than jerky.
Just about everyone does.
Is it possible that with more intensive training, this spatial perception inequality might be eliminated?
(Hint: Use this as an excuse to get more UT2K3 playing in!!!)
... This one will really make the sh*t hit the fan in terms of gender equality. To make a blanket statement about the abilities of either gender is bound to form harsh criticism from many fronts.
.. that women possess lower spatial abilities, and it tends
I mean perhaps the "spatial ability" of the different genders is tuned to a different form of interface. Perhaps the symptom we should be addressing is that current user interfaces are designed for use from the male aspect, and therefore the generic woman (whatever that is) functions in such an environment.
In my psychology days we looked at many examples of studies that were swayed in a particular direction to to flaws in the testing procedures.
Not to say that this article in new scientist really backs up its claims - statements such as it seems
But that's aside from the point - I can accept that men and women interact with a user interface in differing ways. But to suggest that taking a "male" user interface, and making it bigger - to adapt it more to the "generic woman" (see above) - I find ludicrous, and a vast underestimation of the task at hand.
I'm just stirring, but I think it's really something to think about in the next decade as we move away from windowing environments to whatever is next - be it 3D interfaces on a 2D display, virtual immersion - or whatever... We need to think about things more than "lets make it bigger".
I score very bad on spatial ability, and I am a man. My father does the same. Incidentally we're both computer consultants.
Wouldn't it be smarter to say that people with low spatial ability need bigger screens for the same performance? Why the gender thing? Battle of the sexes?
Women use linux too?
I work in this field of psychology and believe it or not, this is one of the few areas of human performance where genuine sex differences are observed - repeatedly and reliably.
You can see this principally in the visuo-spatial section of IQ tests. Some authors (e.g. Kimura) argue that this is because IQ tests tap a particular aspect of visuo-spatial awareness and that men are naturally superior in this regard, but that women excel in other visuo-spatial tests which tap different facets of the skill.
If you go back forty years, IQ tests used to "show" that ethnic minorities were less clever - now it is known that those early tests were highly culturally-specific ("If you give the maid twenty items of clothing to press but she already has another thirty-two from your Ma and Pa, what time can you arrive at your tennis lesson?") - I think in a couple of decades we'll be seeing IQ tests that are a whole lot less gender-biased.
Mod early, mod often.
Or, maybe it's the "men and women are different, and that doesn't mean men or women are better than the other" kind of 'crap'.
Female architects, designers, trainee pilots and even computer gamers should be given much wider computer screens
Okay, we understand there is a problem; But if a female gets a bigger screen then the equal male is going to want the
identical, and likely nicer, larger model too.
So if the male gets the bigger screen too, is he still at an advantage?
Or are you going to give bigger screens only to women? Most men are going to naturally want equal resources
in the case of superior technology.
okay where are the Psych and Soc majors when you need them...
This is the real reason for the question "Does my ass look big in these?". Being spatial challenged they simply do not know... So I will employ my spatial superiority and say no - always say no!
I'm not sure how to break this to you. But science has been aware of this for....oh maybe a hundred years. But for some reason we look at it as some novel piece of information. It is new for most people because to expose little factoids like this without the some exactly proper context to protect the author, it would mean certain carreer suicide for anyone who brought the information out in any professional manner.
Don't take this as meaning there's a whole goldmine of "hidden information" about the differences between men and women. There isn't really but there are few things and it's just absolutely taboo to bring them up in just about any percievable context. This story being a rare exception because it discusses one of the few truely significant differences that psychology always knew about but was afraid to say anything about very loudly. There's maybe....3 more things and maybe you'll learn about them eventually, maybe not. And maybe it's not really a big deal that you don't know.
The world is a weird place.
And I can kind of understand why such things are taboo. Just lifting the lid from subjects like this gives the impresssion of the pressure of worms about to come blasting out everywhere.
Don't come in here with that "we're all created equal" crap - it's people like you who--
Hey, wait a minute ...
Mod early, mod often.
Heh. News flash, the genders aren't equal. One of them can bear children, the other can't. Other differences exist.
Instead of trying to say both genders are equal, why not try this radical approach: accept that one gender has advantages over the other in some areas, and vice versa in others, and use those differences for the greater good!
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
They could also say that women are tidier than me, so that will take care of the "desktop clutter" so typical of Windows users.
Well before I clicked on the "Read more" link I had a pretty good guess that most comments will be moded -1 flamebait, offtopic.
because this story should be posted under the humor section. you know the ever funny foot icon??
I am posting this anonymously because I don't really want everyone to know my medical history, but in 1999 I had a right temporal lobectomy (my brain's right temporal lobe removed) to try and cure me of epilepsy.
The right temporal lobe is the part of the brain that controls spatial ability, so after it was excised, I completely lost my ability to orient myself, and have huge problems with getting home from the bus stop and things like that. Nonetheless, it has not stopped me being able to navigate a computer desktop at all.
I am not sure why this is, but I would be interested to know if people like myself were included in this study at all.
There could be other factors at play here.
Exactly. People whine and complain about how the DMCA shuts down research, yet don't seem to understand that you also can't do genuine research without an open mind. I think some people would be stunned at the number of genuine scientific areas of study that have more or less stopped because a bunch of liberals told them they were being sexist, racist, or homophobic.
Women are worse at spatial orientation. Who cares? I'm quite sure there's something they're also _better_ at than men. Doesn't make one gender or the other "better", it just illustrates that certain genders are better at certain things. Saying this is "sexist" is not only stupid, but impedes real scientific research.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
"...by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."
... well if this is what you want
i've made myself very accessible, and time after time, i've been used by females...
my blog
This explains why Eugenia loves Windows, and why women can sit with kids and watch the Telly Tubbies on Saturday morning without going crazy.
Does this mean that display devices will need special software to comply with these demands?
I mean, I think my system already crashes enough without Women Drivers!
Seriously, this seems like a really silly over-generalization. While the sexes are different, as another poster pointed out, this ability seems to variable from person to person to make any broad generalizations between the sexes useful.
Now, not only does Microsoft lie, cheat, steal, and bully, but they're sexist too. What next? Racism? Ageism?
Stick Men
I found the article's use of the word 'wide' confusing. The article didn't mention (atleast in the first few paragraphs) whether the size of the monitor was the issue, or the perspective.
I think the article is implying that women do better with a larder worldview. So its not the size, but the amount of the surrounding that can be seen. Of course a larger monitor would make this possible, as you wouldn't have to "zoom" in as much to focus on something.
After having to be FORCED to used WinNT @ 800x600 on a 15" all day it's nice to come back home to a KDE desktop @ 1600x1200 on a 19". It really does scale well already.
Of course the comparison between Men and Women in this case assumes that Women would continue to use constantly larger desk tops then Men.
This is comparable to saying that Women are in less fatal car accidents when they consistently use SUV's that are 25% larger than Men's SUVs.
The advantage is illusory as Men would also adopt the larger desktop and gain back any advantage that they have. Sounds like a marketing ploy to sell the latest, and greatest products.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
That explains the dents in the fender then
"Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."
So you are saying, that linux makes your screen bigger? Wow, I quess I'll try it right now! Does this screen largening effect also work if used with VMWare? How big will my 15" screen get when using linux? 17"? Or maybe even 19"? Is widescreen supported yet?
True but let's be more accurate.
men _on_the_average_ have better 3d (and numaric) abilities, while woman are _on_the_average_ better at linguistic abilities.
the standard deviation in each group, however is bigger then the diff in the averages, so it says little about comparing any two individuals.
This has been known for quite a while. IQ tests, for instance, give numarical and linguistic abilities equal value exactly because of this.
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Are you gonna make it harder for men and easier for women or just easier for women? If so, the offset will still be there, and men will still be ahead of women. Whats your point?
That these gender traits are statistics: that means there is a mean and a standard deviation (with probable overlap between men and women). There is no solid demarkation line in biology or psychology that says "No Men/Women Beyond this Point".
What this does say is that there is generally significant difference between the two groups... so why not use it?
In the future the key is to ask "Would you like a larger desktop?" instead of "Are you a woman?" Allow personalization without mandating bias.
Otherwise its like only making jeans in 32"I 32"W and saying to everyone "You better fit into these because this is all you're going to get."
What is music when you despise all sound?
What if all software designers were women?????
Hmmm...
No description of the survey other than testing some volunteers.
Was it a cross cultural study? Probably not. So the results could be heavily skewed by a culture that does not give people of the female gender any encouragement to develop their spatial skills. IMHO, most studies that claim one thing or another about a mental characteristic being gender based have a fatal flaw that makes the study worthless for generating conclusions. They don't have any subjects that are not culturally biased to be different, hence no control group.
It's just plain bad science, but probably good propaganda.
Im not sure a wide screen would help. I suspect that having a larger screen would mean that you just put more information on the screen, because now you got room for it. Okay so I'm not an expect on usability nor women, but the amount of stuff must have something to do with the ease of navigation.
This article title is a generalisation. Some women are really good at desktop navigation.
My fiance is far more comfortable with the new Windows XP start menu, the navigation menu items on the left of Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player. She is a humanities student.
I am a graduate in multimedia, and have studied interface design and useability at length. I use computers all day. I turn Explorer, Windows Media Player and the Start Menu back to the classic look.
I believe maybe women are faster to adapt to change? The factors that make her "like" an interface are basically how pretty it looks, how responsive it is and if it makes cool sounds. I prefer stability, performance and being able to do the job I need to do.
She actually asked me to install RedHat 8 on her laptop... I took a short cut and copied wave files from GNOME across. I also installed Phoenix (woops Firebird) with an Aqua-ish theme. I'm sure when OpenOffice gets spelling to work adequately in Australian English, with Grammar and Thesaurus, she will migrate.
I have a triple-monitor setup...I guess I'm female.
Yeah - because now all of a sudden Linux geeks will have some insight into what women want? If they could do that, they might make themselves presentable to women, not design a UI for them.
On second thought, which is more likely?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
My fiance, a soon-to-be radiologist, and also a woman :), just told me that one reason why there are few women in radiology is that they generally have a harder time taking 2D images (i.e., x-rays) and visualizing them in 3D to see the spatial relationships between the things in the 2D image. Of course there are probably many other reasons for the last of women in the field of radiology: lack of patient interaction and historical general roles in medicine that are still somewhat in place are a couple.
I have to wonder if the men averaged faster because many of them were avid gamers. Those who play FPS video games like Doom, Quake and UT quite a bit are going to be much much better at navigating a 3D world than anyone else. The poor gamers will also have plenty of experience with small screens. Duh. I wonder if the reasearchers even thought of this.
The article was a bit short... I'll bet even most Slashdotters read it.
It's interesting the researchers would conclude woman are 20% less effecient than men at spacially processing information.
Assuming this is true (not taking a position), I'm a bit surprised no one tried breaking down the group of women to isolate the cause.
Everyone jumped to the same "genetic" conclusion (women make lousy hunters). It could be as simple as physical and chemical changes after having children (sometimes derridingly called 'placenta brain'): perhaps women's brains go into a rapid form of job-specialization (rearing) which translates into other disadvantages.
I don't have a position on any of this since it's a one pager (and New Scientist), but it would be interesting to see if the causes were genetic, as the article simply assumed.
Men's perception of woman: it's all about bigger boob tubes.
Why bother.
To summarize: The article does not state if the larger display helped men or not, but with the larger display, men and women tested equally.
Interesting (coincidence?) that the QOTD I'm reading at the bottom of this page says:
Man's horizons are bounded by his vision.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
They should have studied homosexuals as well--then we might get an additional understanding of that as well. For example: Many assume that gay men are more feminine; therefore, this spatial problem may well exist in homosexual men as well--a study of this might lead to either debunking that or proving it as a valid statement.
No, this isn't a troll remark, this is pure curiosity.
.. does every female in my office with a 19 inch screen have the resolution set to 800 x 600?
Read this.
http://psych.unn.ac.uk/users/nick/hormoneslec06.ht m
http://www.neoteny.org/a/lateralization3.html
Gee, twenty years ago it was believed that men used the left side of their brain more than women, and women the right side. Because men tend to do better at math and logic problems (left brain), while women do better with visual pattern problems (right brain).
It was known that the right brain in men is larger, and women have more connections between the two halves of the brain.
It used to be believed that men were better at precision tasks, while women were better at integration problems because they tended to use more parts of their brains at the same time.
The old results can be reinterpreted with the new study. Women were doing better at pattern problems because they were usually paper image patterns, and women are indeed better at flat image problems. Testing for 3-D visualization tasks is more difficult. (Then there is the problem of whether brain activity merely means more usage, but does not mean more success)
I don't know what PET/SPECT brain metabolic studies have shown recently about brain usage.
The scientists are missing the whole point of their research.
What would really help would be to enlarge burning buildings and battlefields by 30-70%.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
In my feminism class at the University of Southern California, the first paragraph of the syllabus talked about the tension between Difference vs. Equality feminism and how it affected the entire field.
On one hand you have the "Gloria Steinum" type feminism that fought against the stereotyping of women as only homemakers and secretaries. This type of feminism cringes at any notion of women and men being different.
On the other hand you have people like Harvard psychology professor Carol Gilligan, whose work "A Different Voice" showed the bias in scientific research when you *didn't* take the difference in men and women into account. Check out http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html for a brief bio of Carol Gilligan.
These two threads of feminism are mutually exclusive and each one considers the other to be sexist in some way. But they are both valid feminist theories.
Brian Ellenberger
It's even more absurd to draw inacurate conclusions from a gender based study. I think that this article was meant to help those that don't have as great an ability in these areas, not to discriminate against them. If 8 out of 10 women, lets say, had impaired abilities in the areas tested by this study, and we find that it is easily fixed by a larger monitor, then obviously we've helped those 8 women.
No one is implying that women should be limited to, or from, any task. Studies find trends. These trends can then be used to help the society as a whole.
some women can't give birth. So cut this evolutionary psychology crap and judge people for who they are
so I guess we should just stop assuming women can give birth? I'll also stop assuming that if two african-american parents have a child that he will also be african-american. Genes are real. They have effects. You can't try and make this a political correct situation just by saying it isn't so.
Brown (36659) writes:
"The arcticle speculates that this may be due to evolutionary reasons; men are on average better at spatial-awareness for navigation when hunting, while women wouldn't have needed such skills looking after the home camp."
And this is even *allowed* in what's supposed to be a science mag? Talk about the dumbing down!
Right, women only at the "home camp". They didn't forage, or watch kids, or take down small game, they just occasionally ran down to the corner supercavemarket....
The speculation is utterly without merit. I'd also like to know
a) how big a population they studied, and
b) how the population was chosen.
Don't suppose there's any bias in the researchers, either: were there *any* women on the team, and was there a minority opinion?
mark "where's peer review when you need it?"
Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but whenever I've heard statements like this before, they turned out to be just as true for both sexes after the proper testing. I know that when I switched from one desktop to virtual desktops, I had an easier time navigating, and the same thing happened when switching from one monitor to two monitors. And later in the article, they mention how women "need" smoother frame rates to keep from getting disoriented. It sounds to me like the women just hadn't gotten used to the computers yet. I bet when they do the control experiments, men will get even better when they have a widescreen monitor and smooth framerate, and then they find out that the guys spent all their time playing Counterstrike on laggy servers, with 15-inch monitors. Oh, incidentally, I'm astounded that more people haven't pointed out the irony of a Microsoft-funded study suggesting that all female computer users buy high-end graphics cards, and monitors which are fully two times larger than their current ones! Maybe their next study will suggest that women buy intellimice since they have trouble double-clicking.
> It may sound like sexual prejudice, but it seems
> that men's much-debated ability to navigate
> slightly better than women applies in virtual
> environments as well as the real world.
Just remember that common situation of the man gripping the steering wheel in frustration, staring straight ahead and trying to figure out exactly where he might be. Meanwhile his wife is looking at him with an expression of pity and scorn, after having reminded him for the tenth time to stop and ask for directions. Yeah. Men really do find things faster... When they listen to their wives.
"Hmmm... so maybe if we render the BSOD in 16x9 aspect ratio, they'll think the crashes are their fault, not ours..."
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
In order to make linux more accessible to females, wouldn't we first have to have females more accessible to geeks?
Because there is a trend. Studies find trends. These trends then are used to prepare and help those that are affected by that trend. You can also benefit from this trend. Maybe the results of this study aren't as helpful or universal as you would like, but it seems like something straight out of a sociology textbook. It's a valid study... take the good out of it and use it. Now you have a good reason to buy that big fancy monitor that you've always wanted.
did anybody notice the hole in the argumentation?
do woman have a wider angle eye than men, seeing
the world in 16:9? i never noticed that
I noticed it when other girls would play too.
What's interesting about this observation and what I would like answered is this:
Why was the Gameboy version the easiest to me? Monochrome?
Why was the regular, original Nintendo the best version?
Why was the arcade version so hard?
Why is the computer version boring?
Why does it make a difference with how the pieces are colored or how they look?
I do agree with the find too. Girls see no "gadget, cool" factor in a small TV. I once took a Casio TV on a camping trip with the same girl so she could watch 90210. We ended up having to go out of our way and watch it on a "normal" TV.
I think the real answer here is that women like consistency and normalcy. I find they hate big screen TV's as much as they hate Casio handhelds. All they want is content! (Something that can also be inferred and suggested)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
This whole article is really just a ploy for michael to get a date!!!
Remember,democracy never lasts long.It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. John Adams (1814)
... they can undo those frustrating bra straps.
;)
*NT*
Back in my days of deathmatch, I would often fail initially on a new map because I had no idea of where I was or where I was going and would get fragged out of existence. Once I really learned the map, however, I would usually kick some serious butt, but that takes a while and somehow getting fragged every 15 seconds made it not worth it (and difficult to explore.)
As an example, let's look at the controversial SAT exam. This test has been, and may still be, written for, by, and of privately east coast educated white people. For example, when the ETS evaluats the suitability of questions, at least in the near past, the questions that make it onto the real test were those that upper class east-coast white people did best on. This not some because of some explicit prejudice, but merely because the conventional wisdom said upper class east coast white people, as a group, were better educated and smarted, and question that they did best with were in fact the best questions. The corollary is that minority off coast people were less educated, and if they did well on a question, it was obviously a bad question.
Which is to say that history is written by the victors, and critical usability and evaluation points are chosen by the managers and designers. In this case, the computer programs and usability tests may be biased to a male population. Perhaps the issue is not so much screen size, but rather the assumption that a certain pattern of use, or a certain problem solving method, is going to be primary for all users. This is an especially good possibility for 3D technology as it is not yet in wide use, and would be particularly susceptible to these aberrations.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
In conversation to wife tonight...
"Yes dear, I had to buy this 21" monitor. I was concerned the 17" impacted your spatial abilities"
The screen resolution on my main home PC is set to 1280x1024. Often when my wife uses the PC she lowers the screen resolution down to 1024x768 or 800x600. It could be an eyesight thing as she infrequently wears reading glasses, though it could also hint that there is some truth to the article.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
my girlfriend has just recently been researching spatial memory within men and women. Here is some text from her debriefing sheet:
most literature on sex differences in cognitive abilities has indicated that on average :
verbal tasks are performed better by women and,
spatial tasks are performed better by man.
However, Silverman & Eals(1992) carried out a simple experiment in which they found that women performed better than men in spatial memory. In their experiments, participants were presented with a range of objects and asked to remember as much as possible about those objects. They were then shown a second presentation, in which some pairs of objects had exchanged locations. When asked to identify those objects that had moved, women on average score higher than men.
In a similar experiment, James and Kimura(1997) a team to the same results as Silverman and Eals when they exchanged location of the objects in the second presentation of objects. However when they presented a second array of the objects in which some objects had moved to previously empty locations, no sex difference was noted in the ability of for two spins to identify objects which had moved.
James & Kimura,D. (1997) sex differences in remembering objects in an array: location shifts versus location exchanges. Evolution and human behavior, 18, 155-163
Silverman,I. & Eals, M. (1992) sex differences in spatial abilities: evolutionary theory and data. In Barkow, J.H, Cosmides,L. & Tooby,J. The Adapted Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press
What about ultra-narrow columns of text?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The literature shows that women as a group tend to use landmarks as a navigation strategy, while men tend to use vectors (its off in that direction, about a mile or so). This may be due to evolutionary forces - over most of our development, men were more likely to make longer journeys hunting for food, and vectors are more useful there. Women have historically stayed closer to home base and landmarks make sense in that context. Maybe this means that men are better suited to net surfing, while women are better at organizing the hard disk.
A well designed wallpaper would be an easy way to spatialize the desktop and make it more useable. A geometric pattern with different shapes and colors, connected by lines (or separated by boxes) would facilitate organization and make it easier to find stuff. Celtic swirls! Arabesques! Mandalas! And someday, we will all have 32" monitors!!
From arcticle:
"This is thought to have evolutionary origins. Male hunter-gatherers roamed far afield, creating and following mental maps to do so. Women, on the other hand, had more piecemeal maps centred on landmarks such as a homestead."
How exactly would this be evolutionary? The male hunter-gatherers had to mate with the qomen who had piecemeal maps didn't they? I'm no biologist, so I might be wrong, but this doesn't make any sense.
I agree with your point, BUT you are also illustrating the main danger of studies that investigate trends like this: people like to keep things simple, so they say things like "Woman are worse at spatial orientation."
That is not only untrue, but it can be dangerous, because we are all individuals, dealing with other individuals. If I worked in HR and was hiring a new architect for my firm, and WOMAN and MAN walked in to apply with similar work histories, I could safely rule out WOMAN because, as we know, her spatial skills are weak.
Alas, it was not WOMAN who walked in, but Susan Doe, who happens to have spatial capabilities that would smoke those of 99.99999% of the male population. And by turning her down, I have made a huge mistake.
This is a simplified example, but do you see how this works? The research should be done (I always lean towards more info being better...), but we have to realize that releasing info like this must be accompanied with explanations of what this actually means, *in simple terms*.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
"Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."
Uh... yea, by buying them all larger monitors.
Perhaps I missed something in the article, but I didn't see them cover this question at all. Ignoring all the nonsense people are arguing about ("Men and women are different, take advantage of our differences","Not all men or women fit these models, don't judge on gender"), I haven't seen anyone ask this question:
If women given larger, wider screens get the level of spatial awareness that men get on the smaller, narrower screens - what happens when their sample of men are let loose on the bigger screens? Is their response exactly the same as before, is there an improvement, but not as big as the one seen with women, are they still equal to women?
I only saw a comparison between men on small screens and women on large widescreens. Perhaps I missed them address this when I read the article, but it's something to consider.
The most stuspicious thing about their study was that they tested volunteers, not a random sampling.
I know if they put out a call to test 3d modeling, a WHOLE bunch of game addicted, technophile guys would run to sign up. If their female sample was motivated by other factors, they might not have hade as much XP with 3d modeling software. If the guys had a ton more experience with 3d modeling, that would certainly explain the difference, and the fact that the difference went away with larger, clearer screens.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Women are worse at spatial orientation. Who cares? "
I care. I care a lot, especially when on then freeway.
Nope, don't understand it.... but then she laughs at my poor fashion sense.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
What, you mean to tell me there's no gummint program yet to force all the evil *men* to buy big monitors for the women yet?
Of course they do. It's called Apple.
Women have trouble with spatial relations because for all their life they are taught that 5 inches is really 7 inches.
The computer science students tended not to view women as objects quite the same way as the engineering students (mechanical, electrical, chemical etc) did. At least the comp sci students either found the computers way more interesting most of the time, or were gentle and appreciative of a woman's presence. The engies tended to yell helpful stuff like "get your gear off" and "show us your tits" and all their social functions included blue movies. Generally not conducive to polite mixed company. The female engineering students, outnumbered by about 100-1 in a hostile environment tended to be a very special breed of thug-woman. One I quote as saying "you haven't lived until you've woken up in a pool of your own vomit". Something that would naturally impress a male engineering student in the classroom.
I think that's why there aren't many female engineers yet.
I do wonder if the spacial thing might be why one of my female friends prefers to print out her programs to work on. But then she's way better at navigating, and finding her way geographically with or without a map than most men. Maybe it's more a hereditary skill. Maybe the tests are biased towards things that men tend to be more familiar with. If you made the spacial test using "stacking a dishwasher" as a kind of 3D puzzle, I bet women would score higher than men most of the time (except perhaps the female engineers).
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
someone hasn't been "offended" by this yet is beyond me! >
How about a counter theory. People who play a lot of 3d death games (mostly men) have developed the ability to navigate through 3d environments on a small screen. Everyone has the ability to navigate a 3d environment on a screen that fills their views cause then its just like real life. case closed please go fuck yourself microsoft and suck on my balls.
It's all a ploy to get an entitlement to larger monitors at work.
Stop pussy-footing! Cut this "African-American" crap! You want to say "if two BLACK parents have a child, it will be BLACK"! You're talking about genetic SKIN COLOR which has NOTHING to do your nationality. Black people can be African-American, they can be Zambian, they can be British, they can be Chinese, they can be Russian, they can be from any part of the world. You're using the nationality "African-American" to refer to skin color! You might as well just say "nigger", you racist bastard! Did you stop to think that a white guy from South African who emigrates to America is also an African-American, but he's WHITE? If an African-American couple move to Norway and have a kid, that kid will be Norwegian, not African-American. Genetically, the kid is likely to be a BLACK Norwegian, but certainly not "African-American"!
I'm a girl too! See naked chicks in my journal!
is there a pachage that comes with a woman also...
So we males have a harder time reading what's on the screen because we have 20% less language skills. C'mon...this is silly, get over it.
Hey, you're back. I thought the Palestinians blew you up or something.
Unlike many americans, I am a minority. I know what it's like to be one of the few. I am white but have lived for two years in Panama in a city largely dominated by caribean black people. Most of them didn't want to be called black. Don't tell them what they want. I have a black friend here in the US that wants to be called black, but that doesn't mean everyone does. If you want to be called black, then fine us that, but not everyone does.
For the spatially impaired, maps should be a series of photographs taken at each intersection from the traveller's point of view. Unfortunately, this would be extremely labor intensive. For a service like Mapquest, each intersection would have to be taken from four points of view, at four different times of day, each season. That's hundreds of millions of photographs each year in USA alone. It would be very useful as a GPS-based, car mounted HUD, but very expensive.
altho it's been a while in my first psychology course, the instructor told us that intellence is what an IQ test measures
Well let's see Koko the guerilla, taught a vocabulary of 300 signs takes a IQ test and scores 95, disturbingly the same as the average for black males so Its my opion that we don't have a clue what intellence realy is. If there was a cultural bias, it seems that it would favor white males first, black males second, and guerillas would be way out in left field.
I think in a couple of decades we'll be seeing IQ tests that are a whole lot less gender-biased I think if we're lucky the entire concept of an IQ test will be out the door in favor of testing for more specific apptitudes and skills. Personaly I have a exceptional ability to score well on IQ tests, I'm pretty smart, but I'm not in the 96th percentile like your IQ tests show.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Interesting study, but I wonder if they are barking up the wrong tree. If a larger screen matters so much, perhaps it could have something to do with differences in the density of rods & cones within the eye. Women typically see color more accurately (cones), men typically have better brightness perception / night vision (rods) but are more likely to be color blind.
You're illustrating exactly the problem I have with modern-day beliefs about gender differences.
" I'm quite sure there's something they're also _better_ at than men."
Yeah, I'd like to believe that, too, but the funny thing is, the vast majority have only heard about what you guys are better at, not what we women are better at -- or if we are told we're better at something, it's something along the lines of sitting at home reading "the hungry caterpillar" to our 2.4 kids.
If more studies were coming out showing that women were better at things that actually applied to fields I'm interested in, and/or perhaps if the capabilities which women supposedly excel in were considered important by society, then maybe I'd be somewhat mollified. But that's not the way it turns out, is it, because you can't even come up with a single example of what women are better at for your post. (And don't give me this "well women can give birth" crap -- some of us just plain don't want to.)
Frankly, I don't give a god-damn about what the "average man" can do vs. the "average woman" because I'm neither -- I'm me. And frankly, I am terrified of finding my options limited to those that are considered best for me simply because of my gender, when I strongly believe that we have yet to figure out which "gender differences" are nature, which are nurture, and which are simply folklore that people have grown up to believe.
-- monique
-monique
Must you make the fact that you're a virgin so obvious, and in front of so many people?
haha...women suck
Personally, I dont think this warrented a "funny".
Microsoft has a very GOOD research department. The problem is NOT with the researchers, but with the marketing of their ideas.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Watch out, next thing you know the blacks and mexicans will be out for larger monitors and better 3D cards for themselves citing historical denial of access to equal technology.
http://research.microsoft.com/
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
I do wonder if the spacial thing might be why one of my female friends prefers to print out her programs to work on.
I'm a guy and I like to print out my programs sometimes when I'm debugging them. Sometimes it helps just to see the source code on a different medium when you're looking for bugs, especially when you're frustrated with a particularly annoying one. It think it's more a psychological thing than a spatial thing.
My journal has hot
I mean, haven't you ever watched them try and park an SUV?
This sort of research should be presented to the insurance companies so that they get the same rate for an SUV as I would for getting a sportscar.
A lot of the replies thus far have taken this to mean that men's spatial abilities are better than women's in all areas (including map reading?), whereas the interesting part of the research is that, given the different equipment, there is NO gender difference.
To quote from the article,
"with two screens delivering a 100 degree angle, women matched men's spatial abilities".
No, no and no, smaller is better!
Achille Talon
Hop!
Who cares? Those exact same researchers you're so eager to protect.
The question is why tests find women are worse at spatial orientation. Is it a sex linked biological trait? Is it because society encourages girls to be interested in doing certain behaviors that deemphasize spatial orentation? Is it because women actually have a more baseline spatial orientation and men have an unusually strong spatial orentation because boys are encouraged to persue activities that emphasize the trait? We don't know for sure and it's worth considering.
Sure. Some of these things are known to be fundamentally biological. No amount of social pressure will cause men to be able to bear children. However, if there are mental traits that men are weaker at I would be just as interested in studying why. Take the questions above, swap the sexes, and replace "spatial orientation" with whatever trait women exhibit more strongly.
Too many people seem inclined to look at the human world as it exists today and declare, "this is the natural order of things." That's silly. We exist in a complex world where our upbringing and the society around us stringly influences who we grow up to be. We need to step back and ask why. Perhaps we'll find out that this really is the natural order of things, but at least we'll know for certain.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
If you're going to rip off George Carlin, please have the courtesy to also be as funny as he is.
Do they also need for low-end processors?
... no women have actually read this article.
"Derp de derp."
Shut up and go make me a sandwich! ;)
It's actually because women are 20% dumber, so they'll come out with a new version of "Microsoft Bob" for women called "Microsoft Connie".
a scientific explanation why my wife and I have such a dissimilar opinion of the size of my manhood.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
That's next, right? Microsoft buys NEC so they can produce the largest computer monitors, and then starts advertising heavily in "Cosmopolitan" and "Glamour".
therefore they tend to have larger laptops.
Lap-tops, get it? Sheesh!
This actually has some research in psychology to support it.
Women consistently perform much better at certain verbal tasks. For example, when confronted with a question like "find ten synonyms for word x", women will be able to answer it in far less time than men on average.
Women consistenly perform much worse at visual-spatial tasks like rotating three-dimensional objects in their minds.
I took a test in a psych class which had both verbal and visual/spatial questions on it. It could determine your gender based on your scores on those two scales. It worked pretty well; it seemed that 90% of the people in the class had their gender accurately identified.
Of course, it is a statistical average only; some women are better than men at visual/spatial tasks. And, it's not known whether the difference is genetic or as a result of environmental influences (boys are given blocks to play with as children, after all).
There is no scientific support for statements like "this is because men were hunters in primitive societies." This may be true, but sociobiologists make tons of essentially random speculations and are able to prove almost none of it.
Just some seemingly insightful questions for which I have no answer whatsoever.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
When I go to work tomorrow I'm going to wear a skirt, steal one of my sisters' bras, stuff it, speak with a high pitched voice and tell my boss I demand a 21" monitor so I can work better. There!
or that muslims are the filthiest subhuman breed on the planet
It seems that you have forgotten about the French.
Aetrix, you're spot on with the part of your argument against Lamarckian evolution. I'm just not sure it applies to this discussion- what about the influence of Darwin?
I think one can make an argument for intelligence as inheritable. *If* we assume that one could inherit intelligence, and a part of intelligence is spatial awareness, then wouldn't people with better spatial sense be more likely to make it back home, and thus more apt to pass on their genes?
I'm not trying to sh*t on you here, I'm really interested in getting to the bottom of this. What do you think?
Eagles may fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
because their spatial abilities are roughly 20% lower than men's abilities.
i don't think this logic would work given a nordstrom's semi annual sale.
You obviously didn't READ the article, you only read Slashdot's inept snippet about the article.
It is NOT "women have a harder time nagivating the desktop", it is "women have a harder time navigating 3D environments". BIG difference.
Lordy, I wish Slashdot could get the summaries right. Some people don't bother reading the articles. >:(
Just what we need, a whole army of asswipes spouting, "women have a harder time navigating the desktop" and thinking they are right because they saw it on Slashdot, and because it was a scientific article, which of course, the combo makes it true.
Arg.
I've got a Titanium powerbook with the wider screen, and I love it. The longer aspect ratio just seems so much more natural.
One nit on the article. They don't say whether they were also giving the men the wider screens as well. Does this equalize them when BOTH are using wide screens? Or do they only give them to the women?
Inquiring minds...
simon
home page
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?
Yes, some of us do go quite well with Linux.
Maybe they should focus on making it accessible to regular people, and THEN focus on a sub-demographic.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Women....on Slashdot?
//#include "woman.h"
What's this world coming to?
Next thing you'll see is Hillary Rosen being the cover model for Kazaa.
*shudder*
int main(void)
{
Woman();
}
Compiler Error : undefined indentifier 'Woman'
There is no reason to truly debate the differences between the sexes. When sex is a group variable then differences in spatial reasoning consistently emerge. That said, the two groups necessarily overlap because of native skill and the interaction with other cognitive processes.
A simple minded explanation suggests that by and large males abstract a geometric representation of their environment to create a map, while females make greater use of landmark cues - markers in the environment - to construct a mental map. Again, the use of strategy is not exclusive to one group. What you can infer from the above is that if sufficient landmark cues are present then the sexes should be equivalent in performance. The following two papers quickly covers those issues,
Gron G., Wunderlich, A. P., Spitzer, M., Tomczak, R., & Riepe, M. W. (2000). Brain activation during human navigation: gender-different neural networks as substrate of performance. Nature. 4, 404-408.
Sandstrom, N.J., Kaufman, J., & Huettel, S. A. (1998) Males and females use different distal cues in a virtual environment navigation task. Cognitive Brain Research,6, 351-360.
In my own research there is every indication that the differences in spatial reasoning holds. What's not clear is whether there is a significant relationship with skill at navigating a specific interface - in this case a complex website using the links. In a preliminary study with 47 participants it's not surprising that cognitive skills - those things associated with intelligence - is a stronger predictor of behaviour.
Now, the Microsoft study appears to be aimed at improving actual navigation in 3D environments. If the environment does not include landmark cues then perhaps bigger screens will eliminate the differences. Presumably performance asymptotes for both groups at a specific size. So, doesn't it really depend on the cues present in the virtual environment?
KNS
And Linux's is called Microsoft... Pot, kettle, black.
"Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."
How about making the KDE/Gnome destop more accessible to EVERYONE! Clean them up, make them easy for everyone to use and I bet more people, not just women, will want to use them.
Take the stick out of your ass and learn how to spell.
Men tend to have a stabler personality during PMS, women tend to be more emotional during PMS.
Men do not menstruate. Thus, men do not suffer from PMS.
You may be talking about some sort of periodic hormonal syndrome that occurs among males. I've never heard of anything like this, but if it exists, it certainly is not PMS.
May we never see th
Does this mean I can use this research to get one of those beautiful 1600x1200 20" flat screens? I mean, if it's good for her, it should be good enough for me. :-)
Women's spatial abilities can honestly be measured in video games like Tetris as well. An ex girlfriend of mine could kick my butt in just about every video game but Tetris. While I considered myself a great player, she never understood the "stick down the left side theory" of Tetris. Even though I was in high school I understood that she had problems with spatial relations. (many jokes can be inferred I'm sure)
The only video game my mother considers playing is Tetris, but she's some sort of goddess at it. I can't come remotely close.
May we never see th
Name three.
It is not always stupider to make assumptions based on gender/race. Especially when information is limited and there are time and resource constraints.
Being able to make good guesses is valuable. If you need everything spelled out for you, you're at a great disadvantage.
When I hear F1 driver, I'm going to assume male esp when using English (if other language I may not have to assume to communicate effectively). Even if I don't know whether the driver's name is feminine or masculine I'm going to assume Mr.
If one day there are too many "cache misses" I'll stop assuming.
Also: there can be substantial statistical differences between men and women, it just depends on how you do your statistics and why.
If you are interested in the average sure in most cases there isn't very much difference. But if you are interested in the best or worst then often there is a big difference.
Go take an objective look at sports and other areas and you'll see what I mean. Who's running 100 metres in less than 10 seconds?
In many cases the differences of the average isn't what you're interested in. It's the exceptions who make the difference.
I had to mod you down because of your sig.
its the first decent bit of humor i've seen on /. today.
gave me a good chuckle.
when everything is working perfectly.. BREAK SOMETHING before something else FUCKS up!
If you made the spacial test using "stacking a dishwasher" as a kind of 3D puzzle, I bet women would score higher than men most of the time
I have to disagree with you there. Most women I know suck at loading dishwashers. Same goes for stacking packages in the back of a car.
Now mind you I have WAY above average 3D spatial ability so I'm able to perform these tasks better than most men. However in general I find men are better at this than men.
On the other hand in general women tend to be much better with things like languages. I find that women are much more likely to be mutilingual than men. All of the people I know with truely exceptional language ability are women.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
They say in the article that the performance disappears as the screen occupies a larger portion of a person's viewing angle, so why don't we just get women to sit closer to the screen?
call the action! the linux crowd needs to spring into action, utilizing their knowledge of what appeals to females!!!
char *mySig;
Ok, it's another topic, but close to the bone. Try submitting your resume with male instead of female name (or reverse). sigh
>On the other hand in general women tend to be much better with things like languages. I find that women are much more likely to be mutilingual than men. All of the people I know with truely exceptional language ability are women.
So, would you say that more women are cunning linguists than men? Explain.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
The problem with research like this is that solid evidence -- the fact that women have weaker spatial skills -- leads to random speculation -- that this weakness is somehow inherent/evolutionary. To tell the truth, we are still suffering from a society that has been dominated for thousands of years by men. A lot of western tradition, particularly in Britain and the US, makes the situation even worse than it is elsewhere (relatively, when you take into account that non-western countries are far less industrialized). To this day, I see huge social disparities everywhere I look. It's better in some places, worse in others, but nowhere is it very good. Now, it very well may be that these social factors cannot explain everything and that girls are inherently more limited in certain skills, and more proficient in others, than guys. However, until we analyze exactly what effects society still has on females (or better yet remove those social factors entirely) we cannot reliably speculate on the origin of perceived differences.
PS> The words "male" and "female" are traditionally not applied to human beings. It would be like saying "two people mated" rather than "they had sex."
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
...compared to men, the number of women who play 3D video games (and have played for years) is probably significantly lower. Is this just a manifestation of years of "practice" in the 3D field?
More research should be done on backgrounds of the survey-ees...
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
Because they can only pay attention to 20% less surroundings.
Thank you. This needs more discussion on Slashdot. I started, full-time, developing accessible software and accessibility guidlines about six months ago. I've been developing for almost 20 years and have tried to code to standards when possible (often not) and the existing work on accessibility and tools in dismal. Anyone else having problems?
bobx86@hotmail.com
Possibly not a virgin.
The question is why tests find women are worse at spatial orientation. Is it a sex linked biological trait?
:)
The spacial orientation thing has been known about and studied for a long time -- at least since I was a kid (late sixties/early seventies). The hypothesis that it is biological has held up pretty well, despite a lot of study (much of it from people who would prefer to find that it's not biological, so I think there's a good chance that it is. There are also some areas of cognition where women apparently consistently test better than men. Of course, these don't get as much publicity, and yes, that does say something about the flaws of our society.
Anyway, that's not the real question. The real question is, do bigger screens help counterbalance this trait (whatever the source of the trait might be)? Even if we were able to adjust our society so that a new generation of women didn't show this trait, that still wouldn't help the existing women who do have this trait. Bigger screens, OTOH, seem to help existing women. (And adjusting society is no small task in any case.)
Some of these things are known to be fundamentally biological. No amount of social pressure will cause men to be able to bear children.
There are other physical differences beside the oh-so-obvious ones. For example, the presence of an adam's apple is a strong indication of malehood (a handy thing to know if you visit nightclubs in certain areas of town), and if you stand up and let your arms dangle freely, if the knuckles face forward, you're almost certainly male; if they face outward, you're almost certainly female.
Too many people seem inclined to look at the human world as it exists today and declare, "this is the natural order of things."
Sure, but not really a relevant argument in this case. Whether or not this trait is nature or nurture, it seems to be a real trait, and if bigger screens help the women of our culture, then I say, bring on the bigger screens! It's not like it hurts anyone to have bigger screens, and if bigger screens become more popular, the price should fall, which benefits everyone.
One of the sad things is that people take studies like this and then leap to conclusions.
From a biological viewpoint, race, for example, is just genetic noise. The "difference" between men and women, when screened for education and general health (food and water supply) is much less than the difference between any single person and another person.
In other words, while the study group may have a 20 percent spatial visualization difference, the reality is that women make better fighter pilots than men do, as those people who self-select to become fighter pilots already have higher spatial relations abilities.
So, to make a long story short, this has no real difference in practice in terms of screen size requirement between men and women, as people who lack the ability to use such devices will self-select out of the final user population and will also become screened out during standard testing while attempting to use such skills.
> --- All Of The Above --- >
How much of an improvement men get with the larger screen?
I was trying to avoid the "cunning linguist" pun.
Although a couple of the women I know who have exceptional lanuage ability are linguistics majors. And yes they have all heard the "cunning linguist" joke before, one is even likely to make the remark herself but she has a very odd sense of humor.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
A UI like my refrigerator would be good. While I can't find anything, my wife always seems to intuitively know where things are, even if they are not visible.
Yeah! I'll just go ask my girlfriend what we should to to improve the female usability of Linux.
Oh, wait... Crap.
*mutters, alone*
-twb
And herein lies the most common failing of many putatively progressive movements:
t ure/story/0,13 026,937913,00.html).
"Boys are told to play competitive games like soccer and basebasll and girls are told to play cooperative games like house and tea parties."
Boys are not a monolithic group; neither are girls. By denying the "individual differences trump group means" point that the parent post was trying to make, all you're doing is trying to shift stereotypes around until they're something you find more palatable.
Not all girls are told that computers are too hard and they should be secretaries; indeed, given the number of programs and scholarships dedicated to pulling women into sciences and keeping them there - and the lack of corresponding programs for men - one might be able to make a case that the opposite is true. Certainly, it's the case that more women than men enter science programs in university (and vastly more women than men enter humanities, although somehow that never seems to be an issue; is it men that don't matter, or just humanities?...).
While it's absolutely true that individual abilities are what matters and that individual differences are usually much larger than group differences, it helps nobody to stick our heads in the sand and pretend those group differences don't exist. The women I know are not so weak that they need to be "protected" from the biological facts of our species, and they'd kick your ass if your suggested it. Moreover, being willing to accept the truth about gender differences - whatever that may be - will help us identify which differences are a result of social conditioning, allowing us to counter for those nurture effects if we so choose.
Many people - including dear friends of mine - deny the possibility that there could be inborn differences between the sexes as an article of faith. This is, however, nonsense - studies on *day-old infants* already show differences corresponding to the standard mechanical/empathetic stereotype, and suggest it's tied to prenatal testosterone
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/fea
Why does this vex people? If men - on average - are better at, say, programming, then you'll expect there to be more male than female programmers, just because of the distribution of people above a certain skill level. Women, with slight edges in different fields, will tend to predominate there. So what?
> We're talking about aptitudes, which are determined more by nurture than nature.
3 026,937913,00.html)
Got evidence for that?
Studies (http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,1
suggest that stereotypical male/female differences in aptitudes exist *at birth*. Doubtless nurture plays a role, but I've yet to see evidence quantifying the size of its role vs. that of nature.
Such differences are, of course, merely general trends (I know plenty of skilled mathematicians of both genders, for example), but it's bad science to ignore them because we wish they weren't there.
> When they call up Microsoft and report that most women in the company despise it, Microsoft can give
> them the correct solution: *buy bigger monitors and faster graphics cards*.
Are you sure this study wasn't funded by nVidia?
> Yeah, I'd like to believe that, too, but the funny thing is, the vast majority have only heard about
:)
> what you guys are better at, not what we women are better at
Really? The standard group I always hear about is language skills and interpersonal skills (plenty of studies available for those who bother to look), which are - perhaps arguably - vastly more important to modern society than being able to construct a 3D mental map of a Quake level.
Or don't those count?
> The question is why tests find women are worse at spatial orientation. Is it a sex linked biological trait?
Almost certainly yes. For example, studies on rats show that female rats with an at-birth testosterone injection learns mazes much faster than a normal female rat.
(If you're all upset about this not being "fair", studies have also shown that greater levels of prenatal testosterone tend to lead to less empathetic men. Better?)
Hormones are pretty powerful things, and they have a variety of effects, from our vision and cognition to our physical development.
altho it's been a while in my first psychology course, the instructor told us that intellence is what an IQ test measures
Which is to say that "intelligence" is defined as "the thing which an IQ test measures". (Sorry for repeating what you said, but it was a bit unclear.)
If you go back forty years, IQ tests used to "show" that ethnic minorities were less clever - now it is known that those early tests were highly culturally-specific ("If you give the maid twenty items of clothing to press but she already has another thirty-two from your Ma and Pa, what time can you arrive at your tennis lesson?")
My favorite story about this was from back around World War I. IQ tests back then had, for example, a picture of a tennis court and the question "what kind of sport is played on a field like this?" Very clear cultural biases.
These IQ tests were given to members of the U.S. Army at one point, I think just after the war. These were generally relatively poorer people, as wealthier, tennis-playing ones didn't have to join the army (duh). The result: more than 50% of the soliders tested had IQs below 65.
Needless to say, the tests were tossed and better ones (slowly) evolved. Frankly, parts of some IQ tests I've seen are clearly still biased (e.g. asking lots of questions about Christian and European history -- see the WAIS III Info section for an example).
Don't you mean FUCKED it up?
We women need big, hard, pulsating dildo volcanos! THAT'S WHAT WE WOMEN NEED. Or a geek will do in a pinch.
~"Sex differences in cognitive abilities are real".
True, they are real, persistent, occur across different cultures and can be understood in terms of the environment in which we evolved. This is not news, for those who wanted to know the facts, as opposed to those who only want confirmation of preexisting idiologies such as feminism.
~"IQ tests are/were culturally biased"
Actually studies found that taking out the cultural baggage made no difference.
There are other confounding factors though. Ethnic groups are often poor people who therefore tend to have poor nutrition both before and after birth, more illness and a less stimulating environment.
If you look at the distribution of IQ of blacks in the US, you do not see a nice normal distribution as you do with whites. This seems to be because there are still a small number of things that keep holding back IQs of blacks.
..... females?
All of these articles on Women being different are just a front for a research study on prejudice against women in the Technology field and Open Source Community....
You heard me. They made geeks everywhere spout sexist remarks. Thats why you can't find a good man....even the geeks are jackasses! Sue. Sue. Sue.
All this test shows is that Microsoft made a deal with Monitor makers and is trying to charge more money for monitors...
I'm surpirsed I'm the first to point this out...
I guess when geek hears the word "woman" geek stops thinking "hate Microsoft"
I guess I just *have* to get a 17" powerbook then. Man, it sucks to be a chick...
Anyway, I wonder if they matched the male and female study subjects for 3D gaming experience. Yes, I get lost in 3D games like quake, but I've probably only played these games for a total of an hour in my entire life. I wonder if my virtual spatial abilties are any worse than a male with a simliar lack of 3D gaming experience...
my female needs Super Collapse!, Bejeweled and Dynomite [all games]. THAT is what determines what platform she chooses.
Why in the name of $DEITY was the parent, my earlier post, moderated to -1, troll? There's nothing trolling about saying that I flatly reject studies that try to essentialize women as inferior to men at spatial thinking.
My argument was simply that, given that both men's and women's spatial abilities run the entire gamut, the fact that some average (and they don't say which) based on some study (and I'd like a lot more details about the "study") claims women as a group to have a 20% lower ability, leaves out a lot of other factors and makes a weak argument to me.
What sort of sexist moderators would rate my argument as troll? A moderator's job is not to rate whether they agree with the post, but to decide upon the validity of the argument.
Ah well, I have karma to burn anyway. Sad to see sexism alive and well in the world of computers.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
Thank you. That's the reason I directed my comments toward /. and not the submitter.
/. every day. Enormous stinking mounds of poo, tons and tons of it. I expect that /. recognizes that not all of these submissions are going to be good or accurate, and not all of them will be posted.
/. to print only NEWS that they have verified, or they become yet another bit of spoiled spam on the net.
/. editors to read the articles they are posting to the front page, especially when it comes to the science section. I DO expect them to check to see if the article is worthy of Slashdot, isn't just flamebait, or is at all accurate. Most of all, I expect it to slightly match the summary, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like potential race or gender based discrimination. It is blindingly obvious the editor didn't even scan the article, and simply accepted the summary as is. Then he made it worse by tacking on the absolutely ridiculous and irrelevant "making the UI more accessible to females" comment.
:P
Truly, I expect large piles of shit in the form of submissions to come into
It would behoove
I DO expect
Come on, it was even a short article!!
And BOY am I impressed by some of the replies! Good job, guys!
Thanks to the moderators for moderating them down. *tips hat*
By trying to prove that men did "women" chores you're forgetting that in other cultures "male" and "female" roles are reversed. At least that's what they taught me in Intro to Sociology.
Maybe they should start making cars with 20% wider windshields.
And for that matter, maybe parking spots which are 20% wider, too....
just that men are more used to navigate through a lot of mess.. :)
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
(insert random redundant comment about women and navigation here)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I mean, come on, its just the same old story:
"I want a fancy 21" TFT for xmas but my company is saving money. So, maybe if I play the cutie girl I might get one, since Im oh sooo bad in 3D environments...*blink, blink*"
cu,
Lispy
They taught you wrong, boy!
In reference to the earliest of civilizations, there isn't a multicultural angle because there weren't really disperate cultures. At least not in the way we think of them -- civillizations were very limited in size, and scope, and up until 100,000 - 50,000 years ago were pretty well centered in a tiny region in the middle east.
"Ethnicity" wasn't an issue with early humans. There were no ethnic groups, in fact we were all probably about the same colour and lived in nearly the exact same way. It wasn't until humans started to spread out, lost contact with each other, stopped cross breeding, etc, that there was really any difference in groups of people. And philosophical differences in culture are a big luxury and offshoot of agriculture...one that stems from having a group of people who can sit around and do nothing but bullshit all day.
But even today, one can pretty well ignore the "multicultural angle" when talking in broad terms about gender relations. Every culture still has a defininition of what is "men's work" and what is "women's work," and as we all move into a "Third Wave" culture, the lines between the two are blurring. You don't need to have all the particulars exact to prove that, though if you'd like to know them, pick up anything written by the Tofflers in the 1990s.
As for "being ethnocentric" being a detriment to my post...dude, did you read it? I was POINTING OUT that archeologists are arguing exactly that, that the classical Western view on male/female work sharing was not supported by the archeological record. I was POINTING OUT that many modern archeologists are trying to establish a model which does not apply modern cultural viewpoints to the evidence of ancient cultures. Maybe you haven't taken Intro to Logic yet, but when somebody is arguing against having an ethnic bias in the first place, they're not being ethnocentric.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I am dumbfounded. Admittedly, having scored in the highest percentile in spacial abilities all my life, I cannot relate to this problem for women at all. So I'll just have to place my absolute trust in the unbiased nature of scientists at work, particularly since the study was headed by a woman. I just have one question; why does the old joke go that it's the man who's lost while driving and refusing to ask for directions? And don't anyone tell me it's because he was listening to his wife on where to turn...
Women are now blind AND stupid.
>*If* we assume that one could inherit intelligence, and a part of intelligence is spatial awareness,
God, I hate to suggest it, but if we give some Microsoft-ites some genetic analysis tools, and they can find me some genes relating to this spatial awareness, GREAT! We've given this BS some sort of genetic basis.
Remember, however, that inheritance from genes and inheritance from similar environments is VERY VERY hard to distinguish. For example, I speak with a southern accent because my parents speak with a southern accent (we live in Wisconsin). This is not because I have genes for a southern accent, it's because I "inherited" it from my folks. That type of "inheritance" is valid inheritance when we're talking about evolution.
>what about the influence of Darwin?
Historically, Lamarckian Evolution is some bastardized subset of Darwinism (natural selection leads to survival of the fittest which leads to changes in populations). A lot of Lamarckians (today) are either misinformed and/or using Lamarckian Evolution to find some middle ground in The Great War (Creationism vs Evolution).
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
Yes they do, with one mission objective:
"To increase the wealth of Microsoft".
That's it. That's all they do.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife