In Chapter 5 “Taking science seriously: straight thinking about spatial sex difference”, professor Newcombe uses a lot of statistics to show her points about spatial sex difference. She talks about three main points in the passage: there is no biological explanation for the spatial sex difference and the spatial ability can be improved, and then the sex difference in spatial abilities is hard to be eliminated. This passage is very well-organized and based on lots of convincing statistics. But some points in the passage still need to be argued.

After reading the whole passage, I really get confused about the main points in the passage. If the sex difference is not caused by biological difference and we can improve it by effort, we can definitely get convergence in this ability. But from her words, we can see that the ability difference is hard to be eliminated. So there must have some other reasons and causes which are not based on biology to the spatial difference in sex. However, she just talks about the facts she found from the statistics but doesn’t show any thoughts about the other reasons which caused this sex difference. I think this is a very important point she should add into her passage to make the passage more logical.

In the first paragraph of the passage, she uses the example that the average American man has an ability to perform mental rotation of a three-dimensional object that exceeds that of the average American woman by half a standard deviation or more in order to show that men have strengths in the spatial domain. This is not a good example because its lack of convincing. It is very hard to test the mental rotation of a three-dimensional because all the things are happened inside the brains. And how could we compare this ability? The author should add more details about this experiment to make her argument more convincing.

In her first main point about the current evidence on causation, she argues that the thoughts that the earlier in development are effect to observed, the more likely it is to be biological caused are wrong. So she has a totally difference opinion with the author in Chapter 4 about this point. In Chapter 4, the author proved that because in experiments, children shows no difference in spatial abilities, men and women have no difference in spatial abilities. But in Chapter 5, Newcombe believes that early-emerging effects can be environmentally produced, which contradicts her pervious points. Also, after few sentences about this point, she turns to the point that sex difference can be partially explained by access to school. In fact, I think she doesn’t fully explore her points and turns to a seemly less relevant point quickly, which makes her argument confusing.

As I mentioned above, there must have the other reasons which caused this sex difference. And what I think is the gender schema. From the gender schema, a girl must be expressive and nurturing, but have less ability in reasoning thinking. So if a girl gets high education in the sciences, people around her may think that she is not a “girl”. And we can see the statistics from passage one that if women who at first do better than men recognize their gender schema, they will not do better anymore. So gender schema may explain that the question that why girls cannot catch up boys even when they have no biological difference and when the spatial ability can be improved by effort.

Last but not least, the author has done a good job that makes the passage more attractive. She describes some figures of fun to begin the passage, and then lead to the arguments. Also, she talks about her main points briefly before the truly discussion, which makes the construction of passage more obvious. And at the end of the passage, she points out that we would do better to concentrate on understanding how to educate for spatial skills rather than focus solely on the explanation of sex difference, which is a very good point. From all these five passage, we only talk about the explanations of sex difference, but I think, the action is more important.

Reference:

Women at the Top in Science—and Elsewhere           By  Virginia Valian

Sex, Math and Science                           By Elizabeth S. Spelke and Ariel D. Grace

Taking Science Seriously: Straight Thinking About Spatial Sex Difference   By Nora S. Newcombe