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That assumes facts not in evidence - namely, that the Empathy/Logic split is set and unchangeable. Specifically, that a) the split is not influenced by societa

by groby_b 11y ago

That assumes facts not in evidence - namely, that the Empathy/Logic split is set and unchangeable. Specifically, that a) the split is not influenced by societal pressures b) the split is fixed, neither math nor social skills are learnable beyond some innate abilities. c) it is indeed impossible to have both abilities and merely utilize them in a mutually exclusive way. While this _is_ a very interesting finding, it's in no way saying anything about the nature vs. nurture debate. In fact, the paper quotes several sources on the fact that "This is, in part, due to the fact that there is little evidence of significant gender differences in math performance in elementary school" - which still somewhat strongly implies social factors. Fact of the matter is, we don't know. We do know that society currently discourages girls from pursuing "math-y" things. It'd be nice if we stopped that. That doesn't mean that all girls should now pursue STEM careers, but it'd be good if we were open to that idea.

nostrademons 11y ago
It doesn't actually assume those facts - the study I linked to showed that empathy and logic cannot be active at the same time. Indeed, it concludes with the suggestion that healthy adults tend to cycle rapidly between the empathic and logical brain networks, and that pathologies like autism or Williams Syndrome occur when people get "stuck" in one neural network or the other. It does have implications to how we might address poor math performance or poor social skills (if this theory is correct, which still isn't proven yet), notably by training people to recognize when one skillset is called for or the other, and encourage them to concentrate on the task at hand regardless of whether the other skillset may be more natural for them.
- Alex3917 11y ago
  The study from the original post didn't find evidence of the E-S split. It's possible their SQ test was flawed. It's also possible practicing math causes your social skills to atrophy. The conclusion of the authors could be accurate, but we definitely don't really know the whole picture yet.

by groby_b 11y ago

nostrademons 11y ago

It doesn't actually assume those facts - the study I linked to showed that empathy and logic cannot be active at the same time. Indeed, it concludes with the suggestion that healthy adults tend to cycle rapidly between the empathic and logical brain networks, and that pathologies like autism or Williams Syndrome occur when people get "stuck" in one neural network or the other. It does have implications to how we might address poor math performance or poor social skills (if this theory is correct, which still isn't proven yet), notably by training people to recognize when one skillset is called for or the other, and encourage them to concentrate on the task at hand regardless of whether the other skillset may be more natural for them.

Alex3917 11y ago
The study from the original post didn't find evidence of the E-S split. It's possible their SQ test was flawed. It's also possible practicing math causes your social skills to atrophy. The conclusion of the authors could be accurate, but we definitely don't really know the whole picture yet.