It seems that this test is measuring the skill of pattern recognition and tactile response. These skills are probably highly trainable. People especially hone these skills when playing video games. It may be that liberals have played more video games than conservatives. Also, liberals read more often than conservatives so maybe they can recognize letters on a screen faster and more reliably.

I've read somewhere that surgeons who play video games are better than their counterparts at surgery.

Its a bit more complex than just trained pattern recognition.

Firstoff, the patterns used where clearly selected for the difficulty in distinguishing them - since they are the horizontal plan mirrors of each other (depending on the font used - se how fast you can find the odd char in the next stream MMMMMWMMMMM).

Secondly - there was no pretraining involved.

Thirdly, they didn't favor just one letter vs. the other as the "go trigger" - they split the groups - thus any inbred "trained" pattern recognition from "gaming" is neutralized. Especially since most video games these days deal with fairly concrete images rather than abstracted text.

noncohort:

.... Also, liberals read more often than conservatives so maybe they can recognize letters on a screen faster and more reliably.....

I think there is something to this suggestion. In my own experience, liberals do tend to read more than most conservatives- BUT there is a small subset of conservatives who read A LOT. (These are the ones who are itching to debate you at every turn, and love to tell you that WMD's are in fact found in Syria, and that Vince Foster was murdered by Hillary.) However, on the average liberals do read more.

First, however letters must be distinguished, it still involves pattern recognition.

Second, my point is that liberals have highly trained these abilities by playing video games before they were involved with the study.

Third, I have no idea what your third point is trying to say. Please rephrase it.

Icemilkcoffee, in a survey conservatives and liberals were asked if they had read a book in the last year. I think about three or four times as many liberals responded affirmatively as compared with conservatives.

The conservatives that know thousands of pages worth of right wing talking points are the ones with Asperger's syndrome.

Pattern recognition isn't inherently generic. That's why Escher paintings work - they rely on pre-trained TYPES of patterns.

So your ability to react to ANY pattern is meaningless in this test because they tested in 'both directions" of the pattern (ie using both W and M as the "go" trigger) - thus any genericism of trigger pattern is neutralized.

So that means your ability to learn to adapt to a new pattern and map it to a particular CORRECT reaction is what is being tested. IE your brain's adaptivity - which is a measure of intelligence and cognitive horsepower.