This study is so weird.
A previous study a decade ago tested this hypothesis by comparing sex differences in home range size and spatial ability among 11 species and found no relationship. However, the study was limited by the small sample size, the lack of species with a larger female home range and the lack of non-Western human data.
Okay so it sounds like a very bizarre approach to try to study this across species when species can inhabit any one of a whole universe full of behaviors and sexual differences, and the question of whether and how it happens in one of your just-happens-to-be-included species (humans) is still under some debate. Also, yes, 11 randomly selected species is way too small a number, if you were going to do that for some reason, and trying to throw humans into that multi-species analysis is just going to wind up with a muddled analysis of two distinct questions as if they were one question. Glad to see we’re fixing that.
The present study represents an update that addresses all of these limitations, including data from 10 more species and from human subsistence cultures.
WHAT
WHYYYYYYYYYYY
I’m just gonna pick some random examples out of the text to pick on:
A common practice is to consider any sex difference a product of natural selection that serves a specific function for one or the other sex. However, sex differences can arise for non-adaptive reasons, such as by-products of sex physiology or through phenotypic plasticity
Yes, they can. Did they? Your title seems to indicate that you analyzed the question of whether they did, not whether they can.
Moreover, from an evolutionary perspective, there are a priori grounds to doubt whether sufficient conditions were met for natural selection to produce a sexual dimorphism in spatial cognition driven by differences in ranging behaviour. In general, selection on a complex trait in one sex will cause a correlated response in the other unless what is good for the gander is bad for the goose, i.e. there is antagonistic selection
You literally explained up in the preceding paragraphs a very plausible mechanism for antagonistic selection.
In the absence of sexually antagonistic selection, the most likely explanation for sex differences in cognitive performance in humans in Western cultures has always been that, from an early age, males and females are socialized in sex-specific ways
Why is it “most likely”? Did you test this, or you just feel it’s most likely?
Etc etc. It reads like the author is hell-bent on one particular conclusion, and throwing all the “could be” and "probably"s in there to lead in that direction, instead of just analyzing one central question and seeing what the data indicate.
There are plenty of cognitive tasks where female humans score statistically higher (multitasking and attention, flying fighter planes, etc). It seems really weird to pick one where it seems like males may score higher and construct a whole Frankenstein’s monster of reasons why it’s really not true and anyway it’s all a coincidence and it’s not the result of natural selection or anything.
