Firstly, I should start by saying I don't think think there is a meaningful biological advantage, and further still, I don't even think GC should exist at all
But as someone who does this stuff for a living, i felt the need to chime in because you're not drawing your conclusion from ultra-sound reasoning
Study 1
You did get the basic ideas right but your conclusion is kinda off. The study itself has a section on gender which sums it all up neatly:
A review of the literature on the influence of gender on RT shows that in almost every age group, males have faster RTs as compared to females, and female disadvantage is not reduced by practice.[13,14,15] Researches done by Misra et al.[16] also showed that males responded faster than females. Study done by Shelton and Kumar,[11] Nikam and Gadkari[17] also reported similar findings to support females have longer RTs than males. The results of our study [Table 2a] agree with these studies and indicate that male medical students have faster RTs when compared to female medical students for both auditory, as well as visual stimuli. In our study when sedentary male and female medical students [Table 2b] were compared removing any confounding factors, RTs of male students were faster; thereby further supporting the evidence that males have faster RTs than females.
The male-female difference is due to the lag between the presentation of the stimulus and the beginning of muscle contraction. It is documented in the literature that the muscle contraction time is the same for males and females[18] and motor responses in males are comparatively stronger than females,[19] this explains why males have faster simple RTs for both auditory as well as visual stimuli. Nowadays the male advantage is getting smaller, possibly because more women are participating in driving and fast-action sports.[19] This is evident from Table 2c in which nonsignificant differences were obtained when regularly exercising male and female medical students were compared.
So yes, they did in fact find a non-significant difference between regularly exercising men and women. But notice that in the discussion of gender, the conclusion was not that there is no difference, but that the male advantage is 'getting smaller', purportedly because of driving or fast action sports (a hypothesis for another time). You shouldn't draw the conclusion that the authors think they proved that there is no difference at all between 'fit' men vs women, but that their results are in line with the existing literature that established a shrinking (to what extent?) difference under certain conditions. They conclude in pretty clear terms:
Male medical students have faster RTs as compared to female medical students for both auditory, as well as visual stimuli.
It should also be noted that the samples for the 'fit' men vs women test was much lower (literally n=4 for the women) compared to every other test.
And yes, I am well aware that statistically speaking there isn't anything necessarily invalid about this (if you look at the history of the T-test it actually was developed for small samples), but it is something to keep in mind.
The bigger problem though is that your application of this to Valorant, which sort of relies on the assumption that professional gamers are a category of people who live an active lifestyle. Even if there a couple here and there.. I don't think it's a reach to say that it's actually the opposite in the vast majority of cases (very sedentary).
Study 2
The study itself notes that their result isn't in line with a previous study, and suggests that it's because of the way they measured reaction time:
A possible explanation is that, in the present study the reaction time is defined as the time between the moment that the L3 AV system issues the takeover request and the moment that drivers have completely switched to the manual driving position, which is the position where the drivers have put their hands on the steering wheel, feet on the pedals and eyes on the road. Before the moment that the L3 AV detects the stationary red vehicle and initiates a takeover request to the drivers, it was performing automated driving and the drivers were performing the non-driving related task (reading) and were completely disengaged from driving. Therefore, at the moment that they were suddenly asked by the L3 AV to take over control of the vehicle, they had little information about the current driving situation. Croson and Gneezy42 suggested that, when dealing with uncertain situations, females are more cautious and less confident compared to males, which may have resulted in a slightly faster movement to switch back to the manual driving position among female participants in this study, thus leading to a faster reaction time. Moreover, another possible reason could be that, as females are found to be more concerned about automated vehicles than males33,36, their higher level of concern may have led to a more eager desire to regain manual control of the vehicle, thus they exhibited faster reactions as soon as they perceived the takeover request issued by the L3 AV. Apart from their faster reaction times, female drivers were found to have significantly smaller steering wheel angles compared to male drivers, with a significant difference of 1.41° (95% CI 0.04° to 2.78°), which reflects a slightly more stable operation of the steering wheel during the takeover process and thus indicating better takeover performance. This is in accordance with the findings of previous studies about gender difference in terms of driving behaviour. Compared to males, female drivers exhibited more cautious and less risk-taking driving behaviour, and were more patient in urgent situations29,30,42.
tldr : there's reason to believe that their results with regards to reaction time had to do with women being more cautious drivers, because their
measure of reaction time had to do with retaking control of a (simulated) vehicle and/or making subsequent decisions (i.e being quicker to turn on your indicator to change lanes - literally one of the tasks).
I also don't know where '0.022 ms' came from. I literally cntrl searched the page for it and nothing came up.
And btw, the whole 'steer + brake' thing (figure 4) isn't even about reaction time.
Study 3
I'm ngl im not about to pay money to read this. I'm just gonna be lazy and point out that it's from 1980 and Study 1 is more recent and included a literature review which ran contra the abstract presented here.
Discord