Hmmmm-- it might be a thing that males are biologically SUITED to learning, that girls are less able to do.
There are perfectly valid evolutionary reasons why that could be so, in light of non-precocious offspring and extended maternal/tribal caregiving in primates.
It would be a serious disadvantage if women COULD learn to 'tune out' human conversations, yes? I'm completely incapable of tuning things out that way-- and I spent years and years playing team sports and also teaching labs (where there is a TON of student chatter). One interesting observation from those years of teaching is that female TA's and instructors tended to have fewer lab accidents happen than their male counterparts-- anecdata, of course-- but I think we were just more "attuned" to small shifts in "hey-- look at this-- is this right??" even when it was a student across the room from us.
I think that there is similar evidence for males being less able to "tune out" extraneous movement in a visual field than women are. Again, this makes sense evolutionarily speaking.
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 05/28/14 09:50 AM.
