Posted on 01/24/2005 9:01:14 AM PST by Rodney King
MEN frequently despair at women's map-reading skills - or rather their lack of them. Now scientists believe they have pinpointed the reason for this conflict between the sexes.
Researchers say it is all down to differences in the reliance of the sexes on either grey matter or white matter in their brains to solve problems. They found that in intelligence tests men use 6.5 times as much grey matter as women, but women use nine times as much white matter.
Grey matter is brain tissue crucial to processing information and plays a vital role in aiding skills such as mathematics, map-reading and intellectual thought.
White matter connects the brain's processing centres and is central to emotional thinking, use of language and the ability to do more than one thing at once.
Professor Rex Jung, a co-author of the study at the University of New Mexico, said: "This may help explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing, like mathematics and map-reading, while women tend to excel at integrating information from various brain regions, such as is required for language skills.
"These two very different pathways and activity centres, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests."
Previous studies have shown that women have weaker spatial awareness than men, making it harder for them to read maps.
Research has also found that in childhood, girls' vocabulary develops more quickly and that in later life women can speak 20,000 to 25,000 words a day compared to a man's 7000 to 10,000.
For the study, published in the online edition of the journal NeuroImage, researchers performed a series of brain scans on 26 female and 22 male volunteers using magnetic resonance imaging equipment.
All the volunteers were in good health, had no history of brain injury and the average IQ scores of the two sexes were similar.
Their brains were scanned while they carried out tests designed to assess their general intelligence.
Researchers then created a map of a brain showing the varying levels of activity in the brains of men and women. About 40 per cent of the human brain is grey matter and 60 per cent white matter
I think we must have been separated at birth...you sound just like me and my husband, lol!!
That is one of the reasons I do it too. Plus, it's hard to get lost with a map. On the other hand, take a wrong turn with instructions and you might as well be on the dark side of the moon.
I used to participate in rallys and all instructions were written. One accidental wrong turn (as opposed to one you were "set up" to make) could really put you off the map. It happened to me and my navigator once. It dropped us from first to second place in the season standings.
Thanks so much for the information.
I really, really, like, didn't know that.
Oh lord, ain't that the truth! The whole car would groan when Dad announced he was 'taking a shortcut'--- meant a 1 hour trip would take 2 1/2 instead.
Oh boy, do you have this right. I've got a "friend" who writes $3.00 checks and sometimes at restaurants. Texas is the only place I've heard of where you can pay for a meal in a restaurant with a check. After living in NYC for a long time where even your own bank won't cash one of your checks without a proctology exam, I was amazed.
After writing their check for .23 cents at the supermarket, they then proceed to fill out their check register, hand over every "discount" coupon one at a time, re-arrange every card and piece of paper in their wallet, fiddle with their keys and make a phone call before they can get TF out of the way!! so you can pay for your groceries.
I have another woman "friend" who can't read a map at all, she'll just wander around this or that road or stop at a "service station" to ask Mohamad or Ackbutt who just swam over the border a week ago and doesn't know his ass from his elbow or care where the place she's looking for is or could convey in comprehensible English where it is. She actually has maps from about 1952 of Wyoming or North Dakota or some such in her glove box that her long dead father left her.
Oh. They forgot to mention. White matter tends to make them touchy and defensive, too...
This is pure BS. Men don't have the patience to even look at a map let alone READ one. I have NO trouble whatsoever with maps. The other thread women are bad drivers? Huh? we are much more careful then men...that's also BS. Woman are much better drivers than men. When it comes to the older folks...over 70...then they're all the same. Bad.
Yeah, I had a harder time sleepin' when my husband was in the bed--- guess it was all the snorts, farts, kicks, grunts and trashes ;)
We each held our own and in the end, he invited me to fish at his lakeshore property anytime.
I think I must have gotten a good sense of direction from my Daddy. Once when I was a kid we were on a trip and were traveling back roads. There weren't a lot of interstate highways then. In the middle of nowhere Daddy says he's going to take this little road on the left cause it looks like a shortcut. It shaved off 20 miles.
Now, Mama was different. I wrote very specific instructions to her sisters house and she wound up MILES away. Also on the way back home, her sister gave her even simpler instructions and she wound up in the middle of the Air Force base. You had to love her though...lol
I think she just doesn't want to read them becuase she doesn't make any money by doing so. ;p
Hogwash. Women who have been taught to read them can read maps just fine. And follow out a plat map, as well.
I have always been the map reader in my family, but my mother never could find her way out of a paper bag, and still can't.
My paternal grandmother on the other hand always lead the way on the numerous trips cross country she took with my grandfather. He always admitted that they would get lost when he was reading the map.
Now you went and did it.
I'm outta here...
This is stupid.
I just had a friend drive from Lansing to Chicago. He called me as soon as he hit Indiana for me to guide him in. I took him directly to the hotel, because I can read maps.
The next day he drove to Washington DC and I again guided him to his hotel. On Friday flew home early from DC so I could be sure to be home to guide him back to Michigan.
I am a woman and can read a map when all men fail.
I also took a cartography course in college for kicks.
I love maps too....I also always had a globe and can read a bluprint. NO problems.....
Asking for directions satisfies the pressing need to reach the 25,000 word quota. Sometimes the directions a woman gives can reach 5,00 words.
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