A course that has brought women even with men on a spatial cognition test (2016) | Hacker News Reader

A course that has brought women even with men on a spatial cognition test (2016)

nautil.us

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I don't understand this obsession with attempting to force the idea that men and women are/should be interchangeable. Isn't there something interesting about us being different? I know it's a different issue, but this is one of the reasons I think it will be a shame if we have mass immigration and no borders - the rich differences between us will dissolve into one globalised, corporatised, undifferentiable and utterly debased culture. If (as lots of politicians proclaim vociferously and in a suspiciously coordinated manner) diversity is truly our greatest strength why not do something to defend it instead of encouraging its destruction?

Who benefits from this dislocation of social and cultural bonds? Certainly not the mass of the population, I would venture.

I imagine that the differences between men and women seem a lot less interesting if you are a woman pursuing a career in STEM and are trying to either improve your spatial reasoning or prove that you are not deficient in it.

> Who benefits from this dislocation of social and cultural bonds?

Good for business for several reasons.

Business no longer need to pay person enough to raise a family.

When genders or people are completely interchangeable, this puts downwards pressure on salaries, increases supply by increasing mobility.

People with dislocated bonds, and people doing work they don't like, are less happy in general. Makes it easier to sell them shiny stuff they don't actually need.

I benefit, as a woman who likes math and has great spatial skills! Sorry y'all are buying stuff to soothe your souls 'cause I'm happier.

> I think it will be a shame if we have mass immigration and no borders - the rich differences between us will dissolve into one globalised, corporatised, undifferentiable and utterly debased culture.

I see this a lot and I'm skeptical of the argument's force. Arguably, this is already happening and has almost totally already 'happened' with the expansion of capital (particularly Western capital) and capital's nature as a homogenizing force in which every aspect of society must be commodified and sellable - any use of time which cannot be commodified is therefore useless time in the eyes of capital, and worse, an "opportunity cost". So the culture we are left with around the world is only the culture that could be commodified - that is to say, it is culture that didn't speak out too strongly against this unifying force. I'd argue that capital's indifference to the qualitative aspects differentiating one culture from another leads to a monoculture in the first place. When everyone is selling culture, those same sellers will switch to whatever is the most profitable at the time and abandon whatever they were selling before, even if it was "genuine culture". I'm not saying it happens all the time - some individuals have the nerve to stand up to capital, but few succeed. As a famous German philosopher once said, considered as a process of history, we can't hold these individuals responsible for the society they foster, however much they may try and subjectively raise themselves above them.

It doesn't make much sense to analyze the possible cultural effects of an "open borders" policy under the totality of capital - whatever culture looks like (and indeed how people act about it) in a post-capital world will be radically different to how it looks today. What would the pressure for homogenization and commodification be in a world without capital? At first glance, it seems like such a pressure would not exist.

Improving women's ability to solve certain types of school problems by providing tutoring promotes the dislocation of social and cultural bonds? Sheesh.

> I don't understand this obsession with attempting to force the idea that men and women are/should be interchangeable.

This is not the focus though: reading through, it's more about women having difficulties in a specific task, which then impacted how they did in other courses. The university found a way to help get better at it, and it partly bridged a gap between them and their male counterpart.

At no point is it a question of interchangeability or becoming undifferentiable, it's a matter of improving skills.

I mean, mass immigration with no borders is exactly how humans spread out from Africa to populate the world. Seems it’s worked out great for humanity.

And speaking as a resident of the Bay Area, I greatly appreciate the diverse people I meet. Not to mention the wide food choices.

I believe the 3D rotation of objects differences between men and women has been known for quite a long time now, so I’m not sure what this is adding really. Also men are physically stronger than women, but women can lift weights and become stronger too, so not surprisingly practice can eventually trump nature which has been known for melenia too.

I think this obsession with trying to find that everything and everyone is equal has also been written about since Aristotle’s time and cautioned against since it eventually leads to demigods and tyranny according to the Greeks since eventually no one can stand any restraint including ones you need to aheader to due to them being true. This equality discussion isn’t a marvel of the 20st century, it dates back even before the Greeks and has continued to this day.

> I’m not sure what this is adding really.

Research doesn't need to be ground breaking to be useful. A course like the one described in the article can be a helpful resource to women (and men) discouraged from engineering because of difficulty with spacial reasoning.

> I think this obsession with trying to find that everything and everyone is equal

That's actually not what the article is about. It pretty much says up front that the woman who designed the course had difficulty with spacial reasoning, as many women do. She got better with practice.

Stories like these are valuable to people who believe that innate difference cannot be overcome. We should think of these abilities less like height, which changes very little after adulthood, and more like strength, which can be improved with practice and effort.

I agree completely with compensating for weakness, however while that is part of the article, it’s clearly quick to go back to the everything is really equal argument and even mentions how gender differences are a popular topic. So it’s mixed at best.

According to the article, this 15 hour program enabled 80% of the women admitted to the engineering program to graduate vs 50% before hand. I guarantee if you ask Dr Sorby who came up with the program that is the main takeaway not some culture war thing. The same course was offered to men and it improved their spatial ability but didn't improve their rate of matriculation. I'm not exactly sure how it relates to that school since we don't know the rate of matriculation for men there, but the article didn't mention that nationwide 60% of people admitted to engineering programs drop out. That suggests that with a 15 hour intervention that women may be less likely to drop out of engineering programs than men are.

>trump nature which has been known for melenia too.

come on, this had to be intentional

>but women can lift weights and become stronger too,

From the Article:

"Sorby’s program, for example, improved the spatial skills of male engineering students as well, boosting their scores on tests. Because they start out ahead of their female counterparts, their gains often put them ahead on spatial cognition tests after the course."

I think the main takeaway is they found an efficient way to improve spacial awareness.

It was known there was a difference, and here they expose an experiment that effectively helped improve that specific skill.

This might sound crazy, but I wouldn't be surprised if the traditionally male activity of video games could help explain the gap of spatial skills between men and woman.

Navigating and memorizing virtual 3D environments is a skill that seemed very natural to me growing up so it was always a bit strange to watch other people struggle at what seemed like a basic task.

Men having an affinity for certain types of video games is a symptom not an effect. The difference between the sexes in this area existed before video games were a thing.

I think there is something to the notion that this has to do with acculturation though. There are plenty of men that suck at sports and have bad spatial awareness, but society provides way more outlets and social reward/pressure to develop those skills to men than it does to women.

I think evolution must have affected it strongly, right? I imagine the men who weren't very good at this were more likely to be killed in battle and therefore not able to reproduce

A pebble rolls down a hill, collecting snow as it goes; what causes the snowball to grow, the pebble or the snow?

That's a really strong claim.

Its might be a strong claim in the bay or the PNW, but that different sexes statistically have some different preferences is a pretty tame notion.

The "symptom" claim is one thing, the "not an effect" claim seems absurd. Your statement is not the same as GGP's.

I should have said cause rather than effect. Men are not good at spatial reasoning because they play video games, but rather they play video games because they are good at spacial reasoning. Of course I mean the types of video games for which spacial reasoning improves play.

I'm saying it's probably both a cause and an effect. Do you think that engaging in spacial reasoning tasks doesn't make you better at spacial reasoning? If it does make you better then playing video games is also a cause for spacial reasoning abilities (though not the only cause).

You can look at the ASVAB test used by the military since 1968. One of the categories of the first iteration of the test was space perception. Studies of ASVAB results between men and women have found that men score higher on the composite technical aptitude score even at lower general intelligence than women.

The reality is that men have been observed to have, for whatever reason, higher proficiency at spatial reasoning than women long before video games were a thing. To say that 3d video games played by boys and men has led to boys and men being better at spatial reasoning is fallacious when it's known that this existed before video games were broadly available. It also is logical to see that video games that play into the strong suit of men and boys is going to attract more men and boys.

That and LEGO, especially the often-looked-down-upon act of building sets from the directions, which are pretty much a series of "spot the difference in a 3D scene" puzzles.

Discussed in the article in terms that the dfferences are independent of culture.

There's surprisingly little detail about the course in the article, just one small paragraph. Especially considering that the course is part of the title.

I'd like to know more about what makes the course so effective. The article mentions sketching, but I'm sure there's more to it than that. After all, I doubt people need tutoring to realize that sketching helps with visualization.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/introduction-to-3-d-spatial-v...

The Development and Assessment of a Course for Enhancing the 3‐D Spatial Visualization Skills of First Year Engineering Students Sheryl A. Sorby Beverly J. Baartmans First published: 02 January 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2000.tb00529.x

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2168-9830....

JITE v42n2 - Novice Drafters' Spatial Visualization Development: Influence of Instructional Methods and Individual Learning Styles

https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v42n2/scribner.htm...

Sports, people! They keep saying men are better at visualizing stuff from various angles and hitting stuff with projectiles. I expected several paragraphs worth of all the outdoor, sporting activities most men are raised to do. Throwing, catching, or hitting balls by itself could cause some of this. Wrestling or fighting, too. Wandering is probably a factor, esp if involving jumps or climbing. Or just wandering through woods where everything is initially weird with much imagery and terrain misleading. Gradually build up a mental picture of what everything actually is. Bust your behind less, too. ;)

Yeah I would be curious to see if women who grow up playing ball sports also grow up to have good spatial skills.

It's worth noting that the course brings women even with men unless men take the course too:

Sorby’s program, for example, improved the spatial skills of male engineering students as well, boosting their scores on tests. Because they start out ahead of their female counterparts, their gains often put them ahead on spatial cognition tests after the course.

I find the second part of that paragraph more interesting.

However, Sorby says, the course has made a small difference in retention rates for men, “but we’re seeing a big difference for women.”

What I would like to know if the bottom percentile of the men who score badly on partial tests will benefit of the course. If it does not then that puts the initial theory into question that spatial cognition influence retention rates in STEM.

I'm not sure why your comment isn't at the top of this thread, as it makes the most salient point regarding the argumentative import of the article.

I'm pretty bad at mental rotation/orthogonal projection. I honestly think I'd benefit greatly from that course.

I've always acknowledged that it's not my strong suit: I thought it was common knowledge that women are, in general, lacking in that area. I'd be curious to do the course to see if it could be improved, and maybe I'll get better at Starfox on the SNES, my childhood dream.

The comments section makes the hypothesis that women with strong spacial skills may flock to fields such as animation more than to engineering, which is interesting. Having two equally valid choices, I could see why a young female student would choose a path where there are more role models...

Anyone know if there’s an authoritative source for the course online somewhere?

According to the article, the course was developed by Sheryl Sorby. Googling her produces

https://www.higheredservices.org

Oh, I had completely passed by that site in my own search because it looked like some commercial thing and I was expecting a university course. But this is indeed it, thanks.

$100 to do the course online: https://www.higheredservices.org/product/developing-intellig...

Thank you!

I have 3 daughters, 1 who excels in "Intelligence about Space" 2 who score... more typical :) Most certainly I will make this course available to them.

It's so weird that in three years, this article has never been updated to point to course materials. Given the publication, it's reasonable to conclude that a high percentage of the readers would at least consider taking the course - or recommending it to someone they care about.

What an unfortunate missed opportunity.

I'm skeptical of the 'common knowledge' research that suggests men are better at spatial reasoning than women due to brain differences [1], in fact we should be careful with any assumptions about differences in brain structure dictating behavioral differences. In the past people thought differences in weight of the brain indicated intelligence, and this is clearly nonsense; likewise modern observable sex differences [2] in the structure of the brain cannot be assumed to produce observable behavioral distinctions.

Although we like to segregate traits into masculine and feminine, overlap is incredibly strong on any given psychological task measured. Go ahead and peek at the effect size of any of the spatial reasoning differences studies and you'll see what I mean. Differences in effect size for height between men and women is about 1.4. Now if you look at the mental rotation task, the spatial task for which there is the largest effect size difference between men and women, you see an effect size of 0.56 [3]. There are a number of spatial reasoning tasks, not just the 3D transform task, and they all show smaller effect sizes, with many showing next to none. How about "tender mindedness", a typically female gendered trait? An effect size of -0.26 to -0.31 [4]. For almost all psychological characteristics your sex really is not an effective predictor. What about the structural differences? The 'sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain' study showed an effect size of 0.48. Here's a fun tool to visualize effect sizes https://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/

Contingency also matters- if you say women are more X and men are more Y, which kind of men and in which situation are you referring? Women are better at cognitive empathy, men are better at mathematics, women are more anxious / neurotic and have lower self esteem are all questions that contain components of contingency. Women are only better at cognitive empathy than men when they've been reminded that they are [5], men aren't better at math across all American ethnicities [6], and women are more anxious / neurotic, except in certain countries where they're not (Japan, for example) or white American women are, while black women aren't [7].

There's a great quote from Cordelia Fine (who assembled a lot of this research) [8] on risk-taking, "So when we say instead, more accurately, not 'males are more risk taking', but some males, of some cultural backgrounds, from some populations are more risk taking, in some domains, in some contexts, but not others, than are some, but not all women. It no longer seemed so likely that we'll be able to compare the brains in women and men and from average differences between the groups identify the neural basis of greater male risk taking."

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21876159 2. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/823 3. Voyer et al (1995) Psych Bull 4. Costa et al (2001) J. Pers Social Psych 5. Ickes et al (2000) Personal Relationships 6. Lindberg et al (2010) Psych Bull 7. Hyde (2014) Annual Review Psych 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEX9Usqdurs

This title is click bait, the title should say what the course is. I shouldn't have to click in to a post to have to know whether it is interesting to me. It's intentionally attention grabbing by withholding key information.

I refuse to read articles or click on links that do this so I haven't read whatever this is about.

The reveal is roughly 20 paragraphs into the article in the captioning of an image, or even further into the article as text.

This style of writing really needs to die.

Worst part is, the article is actually pretty good. The writer probably isn't happy that the editor chose such a clickbaity title

You're right but the article is pretty interesting nonetheless.

With her colleague, Beverly J. Baartmans, she developed a spatial visualization course to help her students develop their spatial cognition skills. The 15-hour program—which uses blocks, sketching, software, and workbooks full of practice exercises—brought the women who took it even with the baseline for men on basic spatial cognition tests and helped boost retention rates for female engineering students by 20 to 30 percent. “If you start with 100 women, you’d expect 50 to graduate as engineers,” Sorby says. “If we give them this intervention, 80 will graduate from engineering.”

How does it feel to say that?

Is there some sort of course that we men can take so that we can reclaim our dominance in this domain?

> Everybody means men, too. Sorby’s program, for example, improved the spatial skills of male engineering students as well, boosting their scores on tests. Because they start out ahead of their female counterparts, their gains often put them ahead on spatial cognition tests after the course. However, Sorby says, the course has made a small difference in retention rates for men, “but we’re seeing a big difference for women.”

phew

This one:

https://www.universalclass.com/i/course/reading-comprehensio...

From the article:

> Sorby’s program, for example, improved the spatial skills of male engineering students as well, boosting their scores on tests.

Ban Clickbait Title Bullshit

It's pretty obvious why men at better are spatial cognition tests. Men were the primary hunters and needed to navigate complex spaces with little reference points away from camp for days a time. Because of this, there was probably a strong selection pressure for men to be good at hunting. Those who were the best at it and didn't get lost were rewarded with increased female reproductive access.

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