男性被认为比女性的空间推理技能更佳，但是最近一项研究提出，这种表面上的性别差距可能是因为男性与女性之间的文化和教育差异。
Moshe Hoffman及其同事从两个截然不同的东北印第安人部落征召了1279位村民，这两个部落分别是Khasi部落和Karbi部落。这两个部落在遗传上是相似的，但是Khasi族生活在一个母系社会，而Karbi族生活在一个父系社会，男性比女性接受的教育更多。
村子的村长要求该研究的受试者排列4块拼板从而组成一匹马的图案，如果他们在30秒之内完成这个拼图，他们还能获得额外的金钱奖赏。研究结果显示Karbi族的男性比来自同一部落的女性完成拼图的时间短36.4%。然而，在母系社会中的男性完成拼图的速度并不比Khasi族的女性更快。来自这两个群体的受过更好的教育的男性和女性解决这个拼图的速度更快，每多受一年教育，时间就相应减少4.3%。
科研人员得出结论说，培养教育必定在空间能力的发育方面起到了作用，因此女性得到更好的教育可能有助于减少目前与空间技能有关领域的性别差距，例如工程技术领域。
生物探索推荐英文论文摘要：
Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later
Abstract
We examined the neural basis of self-regulation in individuals from a cohort of preschoolers who performed the delay-of-gratification task 4 decades ago. Nearly 60 individuals, now in their mid-forties, were tested on “hot” and “cool” versions of a go/nogo task to assess whether delay of gratification in childhood predicts impulse control abilities and sensitivity to alluring cues (happy faces). Individuals who were less able to delay gratification in preschool and consistently showed low self-control abilities in their twenties and thirties performed more poorly than did high delayers when having to suppress a response to a happy face but not to a neutral or fearful face. This finding suggests that sensitivity to environmental hot cues plays a significant role in individuals’ ability to suppress actions toward such stimuli. A subset of these participants (n = 26) underwent functional imaging for the first time to test for biased recruitment of frontostriatal circuitry when required to suppress responses to alluring cues. Whereas the prefrontal cortex differentiated between nogo and go trials to a greater extent in high delayers, the ventral striatum showed exaggerated recruitment in low delayers. Thus, resistance to temptation as measured originally by the delay-of-gratification task is a relatively stable individual difference that predicts reliable biases in frontostriatal circuitries that integrate motivational and control processes.
