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Gender
Issues In Psychology (PSY -
512)
VU
Lesson
21
COGNITIVE
DIFFERENCES
It is
stereotypically believed that men
and women are intellectually very
different. Men are thought
to be more
intelligent,
and capable of wise and
quick decision making.
Women, it is thought, are overwhelmed by
their
emotion,
rather than logic or intellect. Even when a
man and a woman have the
same I.Q level, the man
is
considered
to be more reliable for entrusting a job
involving responsibility. Empirical
research findings,
however,
do not indicate the existence of any
significant gender differences in terms
of intelligence and
cognitive
ability. Some gender
differences have been noted
in certain cognitive areas,
but there seem to be
no
true
differences in the overall performance or
ability (Hedges, and Nowell,
1995). In one analysis
(Hedges, and
Nowell,
1995), the performance of male
and female teenagers on
tests of mental ability over
the past 30 years
was
investigated. The analysis yielded very
minute `average difference'. But in
case of some tests the
member of
boys
performing very high or very poor
was disproportionately large. In
case of science tests the number
of
boys
scoring in the top 5 percent
was seven times more
than that of the girls who
scored that high. On
math
tests
twice as many boys than
girls scored in the top 5
percent.
In
tests of perceptual speed
and reading comprehension,
boys were much more
likely than girls to score
the
lower
on the test of writing skills. A
significantly little change was
seen between the findings of
1960, 1992, the
years
when testing session used in
the study were held.
Gender
Differences in I.Q
There
is no strong evidence suggesting
any real gender difference in
I.Q scores. There are only
very few studies
that
showed gender differences in
I.Q scores, the differences indicated by
these researches are pretty
small.
However
these small differences have
become even smaller in the
recent past (Aiken, 1984;
Halpern, 1986;
Hyde
et. al., 1990; Maccoby and
Jacklin, 1974). Females have
generally been found to be
out performing males
in
verbal skills, whereas males
have been noted to be
performing better on tasks involving
spatial ability, or
mathematical
ability. In one of the earlier
studies, Maccoby and Jacklin
(1974) reported that boys
possessed
superior
quantitative and spatial abilities;
however they were out performed by
girls in verbal abilities. This
evidence
strengthens the stereotypically held
views about gender differences in
cognitive abilities. However the
later
and more recent research,
that casts doubts on the research
suggesting cognitive and
gender differences.
In
this regard the meta analysis done by
Hyde and associates (1990)
has yielded significant findings based
upon
sophisticated
analysis of 100 studies.
This analysis covered the
testing of a total of 3, 175,
188 participants in all
(Gerow,
1997). The meta analysis
showed that `on average'
males and females are
not much different in
terms
of
their mathematical performance. In
elementary, and middle
school females were slightly
better than males in
computational
skills. At high school, or
college level males did
slightly better than females in
mathematical
problem
solving; this was seen particularly in
case of the tests of advanced
mathematics. When all age
groups
were
considered, the differences were
almost insignificant (Hyde,
Fennema, and Lamon, 1990).
Research shows
that
the stereotypically perceived gender
differences in mathematical performance
are pretty insignificant,
and
in
fact moving towards a decline (Stumpf,
1995; Bellas, and Gafni,
1996; Benbow, Lubinski, and
Hyde, 1997).
However
no matter how small the
gender differences in mathematical
ability may be, they are
generally skewed
in
favor of males. There are no or very
little differences at elementary level,
but in case of teenagers the
average
achievement
of boys is higher than that of girls.
Some research has shown
that more boys than
girls are gifted
in
mathematics. Majority of high
schoolers are usually boys,
the boys-to-girls ratio being 4-to-1, as yielded
by
one
North American study (Benbow, and
Lubinski, 1996). There are
various explanations for this edge on
part
of
boys. A positive relationship between
spatial ability and math
achievement is thought to be one of
the
contributing
variables. It has been seen
that males' scores in
various measures of visual-spatial
ability, beginning
from
grade school years, are
higher than those of females
(Voyer, Voyer, and Bryden,
1995). Boys at around
ten
years of age begin to show better
spatial ability than girls.
Spatial ability contributes to a good
grasp of
geometry;
therefore a better spatial ability contributes a
better understanding of geometry, which in
turn leads
to
a great part of gender difference in
math achievement (Johnson,
and Mead, 1987). One
plausible explanation
of
this difference is the social learning explanation;
math in most societies is
not considered to be a girls'
thing.
It
is taken to be something dry
and hard, therefore an apt choice
for males. Research also
suggests that
educational
experiences of students can
also be a possible cause of
gender differences in average
math
performance
and ability. Some studies
have shown a correlation between
mathematical skills test
scores, and
62
Gender
Issues In Psychology (PSY -
512)
VU
the
number and type of math classes
taken in high school
(Kimball, 1989; Welch et
al., 1982). As compared
to
females,
males get enrolled in more
advanced math courses, which
in turn can be one of the major
causal
factors
in gender differences in
math.
Gender
and Verbal Ability
Similar
trends are found in terms of
verbal ability, but in favor of the
females. Females, in all age
groups exhibit
better
verbal ability and skills
than males on average.
Female children start
speaking a little earlier
than boys do;
in
their school years, girls
have better reading scores
and high vocabularies
(Halpern, 1997). Literature
review
done
by a number of researchers indicates that
females have an advantage,
over males, in performance
over
verbal
tasks. In terms of acquisition of
language girls exhibit an
advantage in their rapidity
and proficiency in
comparison
to boys. This trend is maintained
all the way through
elementary school years
(Halpern, 1994,
1997,
2000; Maccoby, and Jacklin,
1974).
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