Passage 2

Women are, on the whole, more verbal than men. They are good at language and verbal reasoning, while men tend to be skilled at tasks demanding visual—spatial(视空)abilities. In fact, along with aggression, these are the most commonly accepted difference between these es. Words are tools for communicating with other people, especially information about people. They are mainly social tools. Visual and spatial abilities are good for imagining and manipulating objects and for communicating information about them. Are these talents programmed into the brain In some of the newest and most controversial research in neurophysiology(神经生理学), it has been suggested that when it comes to the brain, males are specialists while women are generalists. But one knows that, if anything, this means in terms of the abilities of the two es. Engineering is both Visual and spatial, and it’s true that there are relatively few women engineers. But women become just as skilled as men at shooting a rifle or driving a car, task that involve visual-spatial skills. They also do equally well at programming a computer, which is neither visual nor spatial. Women do, however, seem less likely to fall in love with the objects themselves. We all know men for whom machines seem to be extensions of their identity. A woman is more likely to see her car, rifle, or computer as a useful tool but not in itself fascinating.

The word "accepted" in the last sentence of the first paragraph, roughly means（）.