6 - Cognition

Question 1

What was the prevailing view in the 19th - 20th centuries about men vs. women’s cognitive abilities?

Answer 1

• Women were not as intelligent as men
  → the excuse given for this was that women’s brains had a nurturing component (inherent innate maternal instinct) built in that men didn’t have, so this was occupying brain real estate
  → but this has proven to be false
  → our ability to care for other creatures is learned behaviour, we have to be socialized

Question 2

What did the intelligence testing of Stanford-Binet find in terms of gender differences?

Answer 2

→ Found no gender differences
→ This contrasted the societal assumption of women’s intellectual inferiority (that men would do better than the women)

Question 3

According to the Wechsler scales of intelligence testing, women score higher on ___ subsets, while men score higher on ___ subsets

Answer 3

Verbal; performance
→ this implied that, while both genders were equally overall intelligent, there may be differences within this

Question 4

Why is it controversial to say that men’s intelligence is higher in one area (p.ex: greater spacial and math abilities), while women’s intelligence is higher in another area?

Answer 4

• This area of research is highly controversial because a sex difference in an area of cognition could lead people to assume one sex is more suitable for a career requiring that ability, ultimately leading to sex discrimination; Thus, it is important that we evaluate this research carefully
  → even if there was a significant difference in women as a whole, this doesn’t mean that a specific woman applying to a company will display this difference
  → it becomes problematic when we attempt to make decisions based on these differences

Question 5

True or false: Historically, girls and women have a small advantage for verbal performances.

Answer 5

True: BUT, may be too small to be of any practical value
- Only 1% of the variance attributable to gender (which is too small to truly consider as a legitimate reason)
- 99% of the variance to something OTHER than the gender of the participants
→ parents’ education, if they’re being helped to read, etc.

Question 6

What is the effect size of women compared to men in writing performance?

Answer 6

• Moderate effect size of 0.50
  → even with this effect size (moderate), we can’t use this to distinguish men and women’s skills because they overlap so much that we can find someone of either sexe which will work for the task at hand

Question 7

True or false: On average, boys talk earlier than girls and develop larger vocabularies and better grammar than girls.

Answer 7

False: It’s the other way around

Question 8

What are some research findings in differences in bilingualism?

Answer 8

• In an older meta-analysis of 165 studies that evaluated verbal ability, a very small effect emerged (d = −.11), in the direction of women outperforming men (Hyde & Linn, 1988). The investigators examined several types of verbal ability, including vocabulary, analogies, reading comprehension, and essay writing. All the effect sizes were small, except for speech production; in that case, there was a moderate effect of female superior performance (d = −.33)
  → statistically these are important effects, but when looking at the curves they aren’t

Question 9

Sex differences were consistent across age groups, from 5-year-olds to adults over the age of 26, but appeared to be
___ over time

Answer 9

decreasing
→ In studies published before 1974, the effect size was d = −.23 (in favor of women being better at verbal tasks); in studies published in 1974 and after, the effect size was d = −.10
→ this is a significant decrease

Question 10

Is there a difference in reading abilities between women and men?

Answer 10

A study of 65 countries showed that girls had better reading abilities than boys overall, and the effect size was moderate (d = –.44; Reilly, 2012). The effect size was somewhat smaller in the United States (d = –.26) compared to other countries

Question 11

What do the distribution shapes (graphs) tell us about the gender differences in verbal performances?

Answer 11

• Although the sex difference was consistent across all 65 countries, the differences were largely attributed to the tails of the distribution (if you picture a normal bell-shaped curve, the narrow parts on the sides are the tails). In the United States, there were twice as many girls as boys in the upper end of the distribution, but 4.5 times as many boys as girls in the lower end of the distribution
  → twice as many girls who read exceptionally well (of the best readers, there are more girls than boys)
  → twice as many boys who read more poorly than the norm (of the worst readers, there are more boys than girls)
• Thus, the majority of girls and boys have similar reading ability, but there is a preponderance of girls who have very high reading ability and a preponderance of boys with reading difficulties

Question 12

What is one cognitive domain that people seem to be confident in having sex differences?

Answer 12

Math abilities; However, recent data suggest that sex differences in math aptitude have approached zero (like reading and verbal abilities)
→ In an examination of statewide testing in more than 7 million students in 2nd through 11th grade from 10 different states, the overall d was .01 (1%), leading the authors to conclude that sex differences in math aptitude have disappeared

Question 13

What is the country-level moderator variable in mathematical ability?

Answer 13

Gender equality
→ Countries in which women had fewer educational and economic opportunities compared to men were associated with larger sex differences in math in favor of males

Question 14

What are some of the moderators of sex differences in math?

Answer 14

• Age: A meta-analysis showed that the effect sizes were zero among younger children (d = +.06 elementary; d = −.00 middle school) but showed an advantage among boys during later adolescence (d = +.23 high school, d = +.18 college), and disappeared among adults (d = −.07)
• Selectiveness of the sample: In general population studies, the effect size is near zero (d = +.07), whereas the sex difference is significant and moderate in size among studies of high ability samples (d = +.40)
  → high ability sample: not just looking at basic math classes, but people in engineering or math programs (people who are really good at math) are typically more boys
  → Thus, when sex differences in math are found, it appears to be due to a group of men with really high math aptitude

Question 15

Regardless of math test scores, there are clear sex differences in ___ toward math and labelling math as a ___ field.

Answer 15

Attitudes; masculine
→ Girls have more negative attitudes than boys toward math, despite similar levels of math achievement, and these differences persist across ethnicities in the United States

Question 16

True or false: Girls have lower self-concepts of math ability than boys across ethnicities.

Answer 16

True: → p.ex: when boys see that they got 38/40, they’re excited that they aced it, while girls with the same score will notice the 2 they missed
→ There is evidence that both girls and boys in the United States and other countries have explicit and implicit stereotypes of math being linked to being male, again despite similar grades in math (this applies to Canada as well)

Question 17

Name the 4 types of spatial performance which were examined to determine sex difference.

Answer 17

1) Spatial perception
2) Mental rotation
3) Spatial visualisation
4) Spatiotemporal ability

Question 18

What were some findings regarding the 4 types of spatial performances and differences between the sexes?

Answer 18

• Voyer, Voyer, and Bryden (1995) conducted an early meta-analysis on the three distinct spatial skills. They found moderate sex differences for spatial perception (d = +.44) (boys were better than the girls) and mental rotation (d = +.56), but only a small difference for spatial visualization (d = +.19)
  → Thus, the size of the sex difference in spatial skills ranged from very small to medium, depending on the particular skill
  → and in all 3 of them, men outperformed women
• Since the publication of this meta-analysis, more recent studies have confirmed this finding. For example, a study of 16- to 18-year-olds in the United Kingdom showed large sex differences in mental rotation (d = 1.01) and moderate sex differences in spatial visualization (d = +.42; Kaufman, 2007)
  → Thus, sex differences in spatial abilities do not appear to be disappearing with time

Question 19

___ is a moderator variable in sex differences of spatial performance.

Answer 19

Age
→ Averaging across spatial abilities, sex differences ranged from zero to small in children younger than 13 but ranged from small to large in people older than 18
→ when talking about kids, there is no real difference in their spatial abilities, but in adulthood, that shifts in men’s favour

Question 20

Which of the 4 spatial performances show the biggest sex difference?

Answer 20

• Mental rotation: it is a persistent and large difference
  –> This difference is seen in the mental rotation strategy and timing
  –> Strategy: There is some evidence from fMRI studies that men use a more holistic strategy by rotating the whole object at one time, whereas women use a more analytic strategy that involves comparing specific features of the response stimuli to the standard object; The latter strategy would take more time
  –> Timing: It also appears that men use what has been called a leaping strategy, whereas women use a more conservative strategy: when the respondent is asked to find which of the four response stimuli correspond to the standard stimulus, men examine whether the first response stimulus matches the standard and, if so, they move on (they “leap”) to the next item on the test; By contrast, women examine whether each of the four response stimuli match the standard to ensure that they have found the correct match; this takes more time

Question 21

Other than mental rotation, there is also a very consistent and sizable sex difference in one skill that requires spatial ability: ___

Answer 21

Aiming at a target
→ The sex difference can be observed in children as young as 3 years old; Performance on this task seems to be unrelated to performance on other spatial ability tasks, such as mental rotation

Question 22

What is one spatial domain in which women appear to have greater aptitude than men?

Answer 22

Object location
- A meta-analysis of 36 studies on object identity memory and object location memory showed that women outperform men on both (object identity d = +.23; object location d = +.27
→ With object identity memory, the experimenter presents the respondent with a set of familiar objects, removes them, and then presents a new set of objects, some of which are old and some of which are new; The task of the respondent is to identify which objects are old and which are new
→ For object location memory, the objects are not changed but their location is moved
females outperformed males when objects were feminine or neutral, but males outperformed females when objects were masculine

Question 23

What are 4 cognitive abilities which have noconsistent gender-related differences?

Answer 23

Memory; creativity; musical ability; non-verbal communication

Question 24

True or false: Men and women navigate differently.

Answer 24

True: Men orient to directions and forming an abstract map of the area; They are more likely to use directions and distances (head north for 4 blocks); Women are more likely to use landmarks to find their way (Turn right at the library and it’s just past the store)