"The test was administered twice; once at the beginning, before any instruction at all, and again after three weeks of class. The striking thing is that there was virtually no movement at all between the groups from the first to second test. Either you had a consistent model in your mind immediately upon first exposure to assignment, the first hurdle in programming-- or else you never developed one!"
I'm not convinced it's something genetic/innate as there's a whole raft of environmental factors at play, but some empirical evidence of this phenomenon quoted here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programm...
"The test was administered twice; once at the beginning, before any instruction at all, and again after three weeks of class. The striking thing is that there was virtually no movement at all between the groups from the first to second test. Either you had a consistent model in your mind immediately upon first exposure to assignment, the first hurdle in programming-- or else you never developed one!"