From: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa
Subject: Re: IQ of the sexes.
Date: 6 Apr 92 17:11:32 GMT
Reply-To: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

|> In article <34899@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers) writes:

|> [...]
|> >And while various other characteristics are sex-linked, there seems to
|> >be  little  if  any  evidence  that the intelligence-related genes are
|> >influenced by the presence of a Y chromosome.  But stay tuned...
|> \\\\\\\\\
|> I believe this is not entirely correct. Apparently there is some evidence
|> that certain spatial abilities (involving mental spatial transformations)
|> may be sex-linked. ...

This is a good item for illustrating both the  possibilities  and  the
problems of purported claims of sex-linked intelligence differences.

There is little difficulty in proposing  evolutionary  scenarios  that
would  explain such a linkage.  There's lots of evidence that our wild
ancestors typically had a standard sex-role distinction in  which  the
males  go out in packs to hunt for food, while the females stayed home
and children and (later on) gardens.  For a hunter  that  uses  tools,
good spacial data-processing is an obvious advantage. Furthermore, for
a team hunter, it would be even better if there were a wide variety of
capabilities. Just as the variations in color vision are known to give
a group the ability to "see through" various  kinds  of  camoflage  (a
fact used by several military organizations), it is likely that a team
with different kinds of spatial data-processing abilities  would  have
an  advantage over a team with uniform intelligence.  But the females,
being in a more stable and constant sort of environment, would  likely
benefit  from being more uniform and stable.  The idea of a sex-linked
difference producing more variety in males is quite plausible.

But this is a just-so story. There's little actual evidence to support
such  a scenario.  There are many reasons to distrust the studies that
claim to show a difference. The main reason is that these studies were
done  in  societies  that  go  to great lengths to produce just such a
difference in young children.  It's no secret at all that in  most  of
Europe  and  America,  young boys are strongly encouraged to engage in
games and pasttimes that encourage the  development  of  good  spacial
imaging  abilities,  while  girls  are  actively discouraged from such
things.  Boys are given construction  toys  at  an  early  age;  girls
usually  aren't.  Boys are encouraged to play games involving throwing
(or shooting) things; girls aren't.  At a somewhat later age, boys are
strongly  encouraged to take shop classes in school and to participate
in organized sports (mostly involving throwing things); girls are  hit
with  the  idea  that  their main goal is to catch a husband, and boys
don't like girls who are good at such things.  And so on.

Given this upbringing, studies that purport to measure the  difference
between  the  sexes  in  spatial  tasks  have a rather serious problem
showing that they aren't measuring  the  effects  of  early  training.
Maybe  there  is  a  genetic  difference.   But we should be extremely
skeptical of any claims to have shown such a difference.  The  authors
should explain in great detail why they believe they have succeeded in
eliminating the powerful environmental influences.

There's just too long a history of fraudulent use of "science" to show
that white males are superior to everyone else.  It will take a lot of
good science to overcome the justified skepticism  that  results  from
all this past fraud.

Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa