[thedoc (OP)]

Men are generally better at spatial awareness than women.  But is this gender difference a result of nature or nurture?  A recent study suggests nurture...

Read the whole story on our website by clicking here

  

[rosy]

I'm not sure if it's a real effect, but I feel clumsier and as if my spatial reasoning skills are shot to pieces when I have PMT.

I have wondered whether there's a real effect there, which could be measured in some way, or whether it's just that when I have PMT I tend to be angrier with myself, and with anyone else who crosses my path, and thus more likely to be careless and/or impatient.

[peppercorn]

Ah ha! But, here's some important research:
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The Gold Standard question

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[Geezer]

Isn't it just a matter of depth perception? That's what differentiates brown nosers from brown neckers.

[techmind]

When I was was child and we went shopping with our mother, my younger brother developed a reputation for always knowing the way out of Debenhams (we're sure they used to deliberately lay out the stores to entrap customers!)

Spatial awareness probably comes with practice, hence nurture and the roles we put ourselves in.
There was an interesting quiz on the BBC website a few months back which tested different types of visual reasoning and pattern-recognition which was quite fun. Gonna struggle to find it now though :-(

[techmind]

Just read the story, and the line, "The task was incentivised by the offer of 20 rupees for completion in under 30 seconds, an amount of money equivalent to a quarter of a day’s wages" caught my eye.

I think from other recent research you have to be careful about incentives as they can skew (and potentially adversely affect) the outcome of "skill" based tasks. You might also need to differentiate whether the "skill" is genuinely different, or the incentive-response differs (perhaps also by sex/societal-role).
Do you really need to offer an incentive of a quarter of a day's wages for a 30-second task??? Seems a bit excessive to me...