I never thought you were mad at me. I found it unbelievable at first, and still find it astounding when I pull this out in mixed company. Even though I have seen it work over the years, I still have trouble believing it. My experience is that about 2/3 of women have trouble, virtually no men do. Which matches what the article claimed.

Now it is true that sexual conditioning is impossible to rule out. Through childhood and adolescence there are a number of critical points where people's mental abilities and emotional makeup jump. (Not coincidentally these are generally matched to growth spurts.) Puberty merely the best known. So it could be that you are ready to learn something at puberty, but what you learn depends on what you have been primed for.

However when the sexes perform identically at 9, but very differently at 15, it is clear that something more complex than simple training is going on.

ObTrivia: One argument against letting women into police forces was that it was too dangerous. Well one of the most dangerous types of call that the police get is domestic violence. They hate answering them and lots of officers get injured on those. Well after police departments were forced to let women aboard, someone decided to ask how well they handled these calls. The answer was quite well - on similar calls male officers got into physical struggles and got injured while when a female officer was along she often managed to talk the situation down and arrests got made without violence.

Assumptions are interesting things. :-)