'Women can read maps — they just need Lego '

If I saw someone hold the map north upwards whilst going south I'd think they were an idiot.

Either that or someone who was very lazy but also very good at doing rotations in their head. But it must be counter-intuitive to most people - isn't it easier to have a view of the map which replicates what you can see in front of you?

I'm wondering now if I misunderstood your post, SciFiScream. When you say about having the map 'upside down', do you mean 'not in the direction of travel', or literally 'upside down' (with the writing upside down)?

Jeez.

I am very good at reading maps, visualising in 3D, non verbal reasoning puzzles etc. Can't catch a ball for toffee though.

DP cannot read a map at all

While I'm hopeless at maps, I'm amazing at accurately estimating what time it is, without looking at a clock. What does that say about my brain

Me too. My party trick. DH would say "what's the time?" and I could always tell - not just the hour or half hour but within 10 or often even 5 minutes. I wasn't using routine to guess accurately. It could be anywhere in the world or on holiday. It baffles me.

Oh, and I can read maps too and there was no such thing as lego when I was a child.

As pps have said, doesn't map reading involve turning the map round to the way you're going. If I saw someone hold the map north upwards whilst going south I'd think they were an idiot.

I find Google maps on a phone more challenging than a paper map in this regard as north is always at the top and if I turn my phone round the map just turns round back to north at the top too! I assume it was designed by someone who doesn't know how to map read.

I am very good at map reading and giving clear instructions to the driver.

But I'm not a journalist on a still well-respected national newspaper which used to expect facts to be checked and checked again.

I know the thread has moved on, but I just needed to reply to this. It's not a question of getting a fact wrong so much as getting a word wrong. Casual/causal is a really easy mistake to make when typing and quite hard to spot. News reporters work under great time pressure - no, the journalist won't have had time to check it over and over again. He was reporting from the Hay Festival and will have had a few hours to write it at most. It will have been read by subeditors, of course, but again it's an easy mistake to miss because the two words look so similar. You'll find typos in every single daily newspaper you look at - it's just that most of them won't alter the meaning so dramatically.

I'm with Joey on this one.

I used to work with maps in the military. They were mostly on a display in my job, so with north up at the top, but the first thing they taught you if you were trying to get somewhere using a map was to fold it up and turn it so you were facing the direction you were going.

I have found that men seem much more likely to use a map in a directional sort of way, while women landmark. It might be socialised but I would not be surprised if it isn't, either - I naturally do the later and it has to do with the way I visualise the movement through space in my mind, its attached to a narrative of place. I don't think that's socialised, for me, and my gut feeling is most people do it one way or the other naturally, not due to having been taught. People can generally learn the other way, but may tend to revert to what comes naturally, as in most things.

I am wondering a bit about the study. I will admit now that I have no good reason, but I always find myself really doubtful of that kind of result, that it is really about triggering some kind of gendered expectation. I'd be curious to see what happened if they had them colour pictures of construction sites or cowboys.

www.argos.co.uk/search/lego-friends-girls/

I hope the girls are using the nice pink loveheart lego to build their skills. Nothing worse than seeing a girl building helicopters, cities or racing cars.

We are always taught to orientate yourself to the map (ie never read it upside down)!

How do you do that in a car? And even if walking, how would you do that all the time without walking backwards or sideways?

Spacial = spatial...

I think it’s interesting the skills they test to show 3D spacial reasoning ability.

I love sewing and woodwork, both of which turns something 2D into something 3D and needs good visualisation but only woodwork seems to be recognised as a visual skill, sewing is dismissed as frippery.

Knitting is similar - it’s basically coding for making 3D fabric but you never hear of men being told they’re crap at understanding code because they can’t read knitting patterns.

This comment under the article was particlarly insightful

"If our brains are inherently the same why is it that women go for beauty, shopping, high heels and giggling together, while men go for sport, mechanical things and sensible clothes that are easy to wear"

At 4 my DD could follow complex Lego instructions whilst dressed as Tinker bell.

I love Lego, can see things in 3D in my head, but I hate maps. I turn them to the direction i'm going.

I’ve seen the Lego and spatial awareness thing before. I’ve also seen Lego reps say that the reason for bringing out Lego friends was that girls seemed to want to play with Lego in a different way. Don’t know how true that is though. I’ve also seen advice to make sure girls have access to construction toys and I’ve tried to do that with my toddler.

Whether nature, nurture or by random chance, my nephew always loved Lego in a way my niece didn’t. Not sure if Lego appealed because that’s how his brain was wired (amazing at maths and seeing patterns) or whether playing with those sorts of toys built his skills and became a mutually reinforcing cycle (I.e the better he got, the more he enjoyed it so the more he asked etc).

Although my daughter (nearly 3) loves puzzles and construction, I don’t think she has quite the same spatial awareness. Eg for a puzzle, she’ll go by colours and the picture but she can’t seem to get the concept of edge or corner pieces. She’ll start with a face for example whereas my nephew would have found all the edge pieces and done it by shape.

I am excellent at reading a map. A skill I picked up in the army cadets and continued through my military training. We are always taught to orientate yourself to the map (ie never read it upside down)!

These skills can be taught, sometimes it takes a bit longer

I can do the 3D turning round of objects in my imagination but it takes time and concentration (and a certain amount of sheer determination, and an unwillingness to give up)

I didn't have lego and can read a map. Though I did have a game boy colour, and later a ps2, and maps were an important part of a lot of games (and still are), and I did Duke of Ed in secondary school.

I'm great at reading maps and 3D visualization, but had only some basic building blocks (LEGO like) and hardly did any puzzles.

My niece is a puzzle fiend. I'll test her map reading ability as soon as I can.

DS can do LEGO but he was never very keen on it. Another test subject.

That gets us back to the original point - why is this? 'It can be taught, though. ' rather suggests it's not an inherent inability, doesn't it?

I think it may be due to boys being more encouraged to play with toys that require spatial awareness and manipulation from a young age (lego, ball games, climbing trees etc versus playing with dolls and dressing up etc), which is what the article says. I was able to learn to do 3d manipulation as an adult when I realised it was something I couldn't do. So it can be learnt, even later in life.

I think the map visualisation thing is part of this - I get terribly confused if I'm going sideways or down a map, as I get confused about which way is right or left relative to the direction of travel. I can do it, but I find the mental rotation requires more thought than if I'm always going upwards. So having said I'd learnt the visualisation/rotation thing, I don't think it comes that naturally even now - it's an effort, whereas DH doesn't even have to think about it.

True RoyalCorgi and I'm sure my phone would do that too. But I'm not a journalist on a still well-respected national newspaper which used to expect facts to be checked and checked again.

While I'm hopeless at maps, I'm amazing at accurately estimating what time it is, without looking at a clock. What does that say about my brain?

I’m very good at map reading - years of practice as the official navigator on family holidays from age 8 upwards. OH has a terrible sense of navigation and leaves it up to me to get us back to the car when visiting a new town or city.

I'm fine at rotating 3d solids (in my head or by using maths).

3d visualisation is something that women often struggle with. I found this when teaching maths, that most of the boys could solve a 3d trigonometry problem just by visualisation from a drawn diagram, but nearly all the girls needed a solid model to help them to see what they should be doing.

It can be taught, though. I've become much better at this sort of thing just from practice. I still like my maps orientated in the direction of travel, though.