Less thoughtful, more addicted
An article today about how some researchers wanted to test how much impact X/Y chromosomes had on behaviour. So they created XY mice with ovaries and XX mice with testes and tried to teach those two, plus normal male and female mice, to find the door with food from a bunch of doors. The XX mice all learned faster.
But the article headlines how this means XXers are more likely to have addictions and form habits more quickly. No, it’s not that they recognise patterns better or learn more quickly, of course.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:16 am
This article makes no sense to me at all. If the food was always behind the same door, why is it “addiction” to always go the correct door? I could understand that description if they moved the food around after a few days, and the mice still went to the same door first every time, but they didn’t say that. Bad science writing, I suspect. Or maybe bad science?
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Certainly bad science writing, I don’t know enough to say whether or not it’s also bad science. I mean, they got into the habit of going to the door where the food was? Isn’t that just learning? But we couldn’t have an article saying that XX mice learn faster than XY mice.