MaleFemale Cognitive Differences

1
Male/Female Cognitive Differences
2
Areas of Focus Differences and Explanations

• Introduction
• Memory
• Verbal
• Mathematical
• Spatial
• Evolutionary Theories

3
Why is this important?

• Source of much controversy
• Increased understanding of ourselves
• Better communication between sexes
• Need for these differences?

4
Memory Differences
5
Visual Recognition

• Females better in visual recognition memory of
  objects¹ and faces²
• not related to greater verbal ability
• not related to greater compliance with task
  instructions
• shows greater unconscious processing of
  environmental stimuli
• women can process visual information more
  comprehensibly
• when cognitive processing is high, sex
  differentiation ceases

¹McGivern, Mutter, Anderson, et al.,
1998 ²Herlitz Yonker, 2002
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Recognition Tests
7
Techniques

• Other findings hint towards differential learning
  techniques used by the sexes
• women tend to use a comprehensive approach to
  information processing
• men tend to organize information in a
  self-related manner

note differences in object location memory
also note hemispherical differences
8
Variation in Object Memory Tests

• One point to note here is the significance of an
  age-related variable in conjunction with gender
  differentiation
• boys and girls scored equally on object memory
  identification for male-oriented objects
• girls scored higher on object memory
  identification for female-oriented and random
  objects
• possibly due to the aforementioned learning
  techniques used by the sexes (i.e. boys use
  self-referential learning techniques)

9

• Studies of sex differentiation in the recall of
  life events
• Females remembered more positive and more
  negative events
• Both males and females are equally adept at mood
  retrieval
• suggests that women encode life events in greater
  detail, enabling better recall
• difference not due to motivation, fluency,
  writing speed, or length of past event
• Tendency of the sexes to excel in relation to the
  tasks and their instructions
• When tasks involve high use of verbal cues in
  conjunction with visual information, women tend
  to excel in episodic memory
• When tasks require spatial thinking with visual
  information, men tend to excel
• However, womens higher performance on episodic
  memory tasks cannot fully be explained by their
  (adeptness) on verbal production tasks.

Seidlitz Diener, 1998
Herlitz, Airaksinen, Nordström, 1999
10
Verbal Differences
11
Developmental/Pre-Adult Sex Differences in Verbal
Ability

• Girls learn to speak earlier than boys, and have
  larger working vocabularies at younger ages than
  boys
• Girls seem to be better spellers than boys, and
  tend to speak more grammatically than boys
• On tests involving certain phonological
  constraints (that is, tests measuring fluency),
  girls perform significantly better than boys
• Fluency, spelling, and grammatical speech
  advantages continue to favor women throughout the
  life span other verbal intelligence abilities do
  not seem to favor women

12
Adult Sex Differences in Verbal Ability

• Women are better than men at reading color names
  from a list no significant sex difference occurs
  when numbers or letters are read, with rate of
  articulation not a significant factor in causing
  the difference
• Verbal memory is much stronger in women, seems to
  occur because women more readily semantically
  group and categorize information than men

13
Cross-Cultural Evidence for Verbal Differences

• Study conducted on Japanese high school students
  found that women excelled on story recall test,
  word fluency test (Mann, et al. 1990)
• Another study, conducted on South African
  Indians, native Africans, and Caucasians, found
  similar sex-differences in recalling relevant
  details from a recited paragraph (Owen Lynn
  1993)

14
Some Muddying Evidence

• Data from standardized tests that attempt to
  assess overall verbal intelligence (the verbal
  portion of the WAIS, in particular), shows that
  men score slightly higher than women
• Explanation Because newest theories of the brain
  propose that it is a highly modular organ, women
  may have very specific advantages in verbal
  ability (specific modular advantages) and that
  general verbal intelligence (the functioning of
  several modules) is nearly identical between the
  sexes

15
Mathematical Differences
16
Mathematical Ability and Aptitude Claims

• Simon Baron-Cohen claims that male infants learn
  about objects and their mechanical relationships
  and female infants learn about people, emotions,
  and personal relationships. (Baron-Cohen, 2003)
• Boys are more apt than girls to develop the
  knowledge and skills required by mathematics and
  science.
• Males are systemizers and Females are
  empathizers
• Specific cognitive systems give rise to effective
  reasoning in mathematics
• Males have better command over these systems,
  for reasons that stem ultimately from genetic
  differences between the sexes. (Kimura, 1999)
• Gender disparities at the upper end of the
  ability distribution
• Males show greater variability in inherent
  mathematical talent, and therefore they
  predominate in the pool of highly talented
  students from which future mathematicians and
  scientists will emerge (Benbow Stanley, 1983)

17
The Other Side

• Psychologist Janet Hyde of the University of
  Wisconsin, in a meta-analysis of the math scores
  of 4 million students
• found few differences
• Boys outperformed girls in 51 percent of the
  studies
• girls outperformed boys in 43 percent
• no or little gender difference in five percent
  of the studies
• Erin Leahey and Guang Gao at the University of
  North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• followed 20,000 four-to-eighteen-year-olds to
  track specific math abilities
• "based on prior literature, we expected large
  gender differences to emerge as early as junior
  high school."
• Instead, they found the trajectories of male and
  female math scores nearly identical all across
  the age range.
• Psychologist Diane Halpern of Claremont McKenna
  College
• Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin
• The Psychology of Sex Differences, 1974
• They reviewed evidence for all sorts of sex
  differences, across large numbers of studies
• They concluded that certain ideas about
  differences between the genders were myths
• Number one Myth was the idea that males are
  primarily interested in objects and females are
  primarily interested in people.
• Reviewed an enormous amounts of literature,
• They concluded that there were no sex differences
  in these interests.
• "differences are not deficiencies" (Halpern,
  2000)

18
Sex Differences in Mathematical Ability from
Infancy to Adolescence

• Learning about objects
• From birth, babies perceive objects. They know
  where one object ends and the next one begins.
  They can't see objects as well as we can, but as
  they grow their object perception becomes richer
  and more differentiated.
• basic inferences about object motion
• systematic developmental change, and there's
  variability. Because of this variability, we can
  compare the abilities of male infants to females.
  Do we see sex differences? The research gives a
  clear answer to this question We don't.
• equal developmental paths.
• Counting
• Females learn at a younger age
• Geometry/ rotation
• Different method in mapping and geometry
• Arithmetic Computation
• Higher female scores
• Where is there a difference? Does this difference
  mean better?

19
Hormones?

• Hormonal changes during adolescence
• Differences in mathematical reasoning ability
  begin to show up on tests taken in the 9th, 10th
  and 11th grades
• by this time have been exposed to different
  educational experiences that might account for
  differences in achievement
• The study done by Benbow and Stanley sidestepped
  this argument
• test results of 9,927 7th and 8th graders
• say their findings don't support the differential
  course-taking hypothesis because until 8th grade
  most students received similar instruction in
  mathematics
• Doreen Kimura ,1992 Scientific American article
• "The bulk of the evidence suggests, however, that
  the effects of sex hormones on brain organization
  occur so early in life that from the start the
  environment is acting on differently wired brains
  in girls and boys.

20
SAT vs. Coursework

• Largest used quantifier of mathematical ability
  after adolescence
• Results of the test
• Are the results reflective of cultural influences
  rather than intellectual ability?
• other standardized tests have a significantly
  smaller gender gap
• cross-national score comparison
• coursework shows little favor to males
• Possible reasons for the results
• fewer boys take the SATM
• pool of test takers
• the SATM tests speed and problem-solving
• Question Content
• In high school, girls and boys the same amount of
  math classes, including the advanced ones
• girls get better grades
• In college women earn almost half of the
  bachelor's
• degrees in mathematics
• - men and women get equal grades.

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22
Lawrence Summers
23
Pinker vs. Spelke

• April 22, 2005, Harvard University's
  Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative (MBB) debate on
  the public discussion that began on January 16th
  with the public comments by Lawrence Summers,
  president of Harvard, on sex differences
• Pinker
• There is much hard evidence for innate sex
  differences, evidence that cannot always be
  explained by socialization and bias.
• Nancy Hopkins
• if the tests are really so useless . . .
• the meta-analysis by Voyer et al found in
  mathematical reasoning there has been a decline
  in the size of the difference, although it has
  certainly not disappeared.
• Steven Pinker writes in his widely reviewed 2002
  book The Blank Slate that men are risk-takers but
  women "are more likely to choose administrative
  support jobs that offer lower pay in
  air-conditioned offices."
• Lack of cross-cultural analysis
• Biological determinism

http//www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_
index.html
24
Pinker vs. Spelke

• Spelke
• From the moment of birth, there unintentional
  but pervasive and important differences in the
  ways females and males are perceived
• and evaluated
• Research on the cognitive abilities of males and
  females, from birth to maturity, does not support
  the
• claim that men have greater intrinsic aptitude
  for mathematics and science.
• "the tests are no good
• 5 different types of cognitive thinking at the
  core of mathematical thinking
• serves to represent small, exact numbers of
  objects the difference between one, two, and
  three (Butterworth,
• 1999 Trick Pylyshyn, 1994).
• serves to represent large, approximate
  numerical magnitudes the difference in number(
  Barth, Kanwisher, Spelke, 2003 van Oeffelen
  Vos, 1982).
• consists of the quantifiers, number words, and
  verbal counting routine that children gain with
  the acquisition of a natural language (Wynn,
  1992a).
• 4 5. serve to represent environmental geometry
  and landmarks, respectively, for purposes of
  navigation, spatial memory, and geometrical
• reasoning (Newcombe Huttenlocher,
  2000 Wang Spelke, 2002).

http//www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_
index.html
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Spatial Differences
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Mental Rotation Tests 2-D

• Rotation of objects quickly and accurately
• Compares
• easy rotation with the clock face present
• harder rotation with the clock face absent

Collins and Kimura 1997
27
Mental Rotation Test 3-D

• Rotation of 3-D blocks in the imagination to
  choose the correct figure
• Advantage
• Timing

Vandenberg and Kuse 1978
28
Spatial Visualization

• Spatial information with several different steps
  to get to the correct answer.
• DAT Space Relations Test- Subjects must determine
  what the paper will look like folded

Bennett, Seashore, and Wesman 1947
29
Spatial Perception

• The ability to determine spatial relations
  despite distraction information
• Water level Test
• Subjects must determine the correct water level
  orientation

Piaget and Inhelder 1956
30
Mental maps

• Spatial visualization is used in route learning
• The differences in direction memory
• Men seed to use more cardinal and geometric
  strategies
• Women seen to use more landmarks

Galea and Kimura 1993
31
Cognitive Evolution
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Evolutionary Theories

• Sexual Selection
• Adaptive Evolution
• Culture and Socialization

33
Throughout this century , the question of sex
differences in the brain and cognition has
captured the attention of the general public and
has been an area of intensive and often
contentious scientific study. Today the, the
existence of sex differences in the pattern of
cognitive abilityis not questioned by most
scientists, although the origin of these
differences is debated. Male, Female by David
C. Geary

• Sexual Selection
• Competition among mates for reproduction
• Most desirable traits in each sex passed on
• Male-male competition
• Female-female completion

34
Adaptive Evolution

• Females
• Adapted to childrens breeding and education
• Education of children requires greater vocabulary
• Empathy needed in women for rearing children

• Males
• Adapted to hunting
• Spatial skills increase through hunting

Serge Ginger Female Brains VS. Male Brains 2003
35
Culture and Socialization
Culture and Socialization certainly play a role
in determining if you develop a male brain or
female brain Baron-Cohen The Essential
Difference 2005
What people say, what people do, and what they
say they do are entirely different
things Margaret Mead Male and Female 1949
Yet attempts to explain this gender imbalance
are dismissive of the cultural factors that
discourage Ruth Sheldon Not just a game for
the boys
Male and Female Margaret Mead 1949
36
Sex Tests?
http//www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_use
r.shtml
37
What does all this mean?

• A definitive line cannot be drawn
• These differences are constantly changing
• Biased reports and inaccurate data collection
• Enculturation?