Female vs Male Psychology

[bigfield]

It's interesting to read this. As a female Chemical Engineer, our discipline had a higher percentage of women than any other engineering major at college. And the top ranking students were almost all female.

I had always hypothesized that this was a measure of women in engineering being there because they were SEEKING a particular field, whereas men in engineering often just "fell" there based on, "well I like math and tools so I didn't know what else to do," followed by NOBODY just "falls" into Chemical Engineering like they do into civil, mechanical and electrical. So the nearly 50-50 split of genders in Chemical Engineering in my college was possibly an approximation of what the genders would look like if you removed cultural influences (that result in casual/accidental/trying-it-out) on choices in majors.

The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is grossly insufficient.

Source: ASEE

It's highly unlikely that the fields below Civil are populated by young men who lacked a concrete career preference and that the fields above Chemical are not.

The causes are something else, likely including (but not limited to) social structures that encourage young women to work in the life sciences and encourage young men to work on machines.

The influence exists well before university: chemistry and biology are popular with girls (relative to boys) while physics and maths are not:

Source: UK Government (It's not US school data but I'm going to guess it's in the ballpark.)

So the relatively high number of women in biological and chemical engineering fields correlates with the relatively high number of girls in bio and chem in high school, which suggests that the high number of women in Chemical etc. is not due to a clear sense of career direction, but instead is determined by the subjects those people chose in high school.

There are probably multiple social structures that cause this divergence between boys and girls when it comes to high school science and maths:

• Peer group: Students may be discouraged from doing physics and advanced maths because they are nerdy/uncool subjects, and this discouragement may be having a greater effect on girls than on boys.
• The establishment: Physics and maths teachers may be (unconsciously) biased towards boys. Many schools also do career counselling in middle school, and counsellors and career guidance questionnaires may be unintentionally steering girls away from physics and math. For example, a computerised questionnaire may be weighting questions poorly, or constructing them poorly, or a human counsellor may be biased.
• Family: Parents and extended family may be encouraging boys more than girls to pursue physics.
• Media stereotypes: Girls may have internalised popular stereotypes that maths and physics are not feminine, or that women don't belong in those fields. This is a positive feedback loop: if girls and boys choose their interests based on stereotypes then they reinforce those stereotypes for the next generation.

This is not meant to be exhaustive.

There is also the question of the influence of genes: boys (on average) may have a greater natural aptitude for (or interest in) physics and maths.

 

[Juma]

ronburgubdy: ...

Theese are the "studies" you refer to:

cyclical fluctuations

castrating male rats hinders the ability to navigate a maze, but injecting them with testosterone improves their navigation

Increase in estrogen during the female menstrual cycle impairs spatial tasks

I have a lot to say about these studies and what you tries to make them say but It suffices to say this:

neither of the references says anything about how much spatial, verbal or any other such function differ between men and women.

 

[ronburgundy]

ronburgubdy:...

Theese are the "studies" you refer to:

castrating male rats hinders the ability to navigate a maze, but injecting them with testosterone improves their navigation

Increase in estrogen during the female menstrual cycle impairs spatial tasks

I have a lot to say about these studies and what you tries to make them say but It suffices to say this:

neither if the references says anything about how much spatial, verbal or any other such function differ between men and women.

Recognizing the objective fact that your replies show basic ignorance of science and how to reason from converging evidence doesn't require arrogance.

Here is a direct quote from the third link:
[P]"Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."
[/P]

IOW, you are definitively and objectively wrong in your claim that these links say nothing about gender differences in spatial functions. Actual arrogance is what underlies your refusal to admit this and to presume that your completely unschooled, faith-based opinion on the subject is more valid than that of the experts who actually research the question.

 

[fromderinside]

Recognizing the objective fact that [/strike' your replies show basic ignorance of science and how to reason from converging evidence doesn't require arrogance .

Here is a direct quote from the third link:
[P]"Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."
[/P]

IOW, you are definitively and objectively wrong in your claim that these links say nothing about gender differences in spatial functions. Actual arrogance is what underlies your refusal to admit this and to presume that your completely unschooled, faith-based opinion on the subject is (not) more valid than that of the experts who actually research the question.

What you say when I fix it.

I don't think you intended what I found in the first bit when you wrote it. However when hooray is eliminated that's what remained.

I agree Juma's opinion is not more valid that that of the researchers.

As for your responses of similar form to mine let me just remind you that my references are just as valid as are your references. Time or good or bad science doesn't make it good or bad. Seems to me you are imputing capability in your interpretation of results when all they show are attained differences in performance. Even today we still presume, in psychology, environment is at least as likely to impact outcomes of mature individuals is genetic makeup.

Just let me drop this one in your nickers. I want to see how you react.

Females and Males Rely on Different Cortical Regions in Raven’s Matrices Reasoning Capacity: Evidence from a Voxel-Based Morphometry Study http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0093104

Abstract:

Raven’s Matrices test (RMT) is a non-verbal test designed to assess individuals’ ability to reason and solve new problems without relying extensively on declarative knowledge derived from schooling or previous experience. Despite a large number of behavioral studies that demonstrated gender differences in Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability, no neural evidence supported this difference. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used in an attempt to uncover the gender-specific neural basis of Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability as measured by the combined Raven’s Matrices test (CRT) in 370 healthy young adults. The behavioral results showed no difference between males and females. However, the VBM results showed that the relationship between reasoning ability and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. The association between CRT scores and rGMV in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with visuospatial ability) was significantly greater in males than in females, whereas the reverse was true for the inferior frontal cortex (relating to verbal reasoning ability) and the medial frontal cortex (engaged in information binding) where the association was greater in females. These findings suggest that males and females use differently structured brains in different ways to achieve similar levels of overall Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability.

There are no differences but there are difference in adult brain proportions .... have fun wiggling.

 

[Juma]

ronburgubdy:...

Theese are the "studies" you refer to:

Increase in estrogen during the female menstrual cycle impairs spatial tasks

I have a lot to say about these studies and what you tries to make them say but It suffices to say this:

neither if the references says anything about how much spatial, verbal or any other such function differ between men and women.

Recognizing the objective fact that your replies show basic ignorance of science and how to reason from converging evidence doesn't require arrogance.

Here is a direct quote from the third link:
[P]"Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."
[/P]

IOW, you are definitively and objectively wrong in your claim that these links say nothing about gender differences in spatial functions. Actual arrogance is what underlies your refusal to admit this and to presume that your completely unschooled, faith-based opinion on the subject is more valid than that of the experts who actually research the question.

Eh. 1) The bolded text is just the researchers opinion and not part of the study.
2) all that they say is that the MEAN VALUE is not above mens mean value. Without a actual value of the difference that statement is totally worthless.

So, cut the arrogance.

 

[ronburgundy]

ronburgubdy:...

Theese are the "studies" you refer to:

Increase in estrogen during the female menstrual cycle impairs spatial tasks

I have a lot to say about these studies and what you tries to make them say but It suffices to say this:

neither if the references says anything about how much spatial, verbal or any other such function differ between men and women.

Recognizing the objective fact that your replies show basic ignorance of science and how to reason from converging evidence doesn't require arrogance.

Here is a direct quote from the third link:
[P]"Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."
[/P]

IOW, you are definitively and objectively wrong in your claim that these links say nothing about gender differences in spatial functions. Actual arrogance is what underlies your refusal to admit this and to presume that your completely unschooled, faith-based opinion on the subject is more valid than that of the experts who actually research the question.

Eh. 1) The bolded text is just the researchers opinion and not part of the study.

No. It is the researchers summarize the statistical facts about the empirical results of the study.

2) all that they say is that the MEAN VALUE is not above mens mean value. Without a actual value of the difference that statement is totally worthless.

No, they are saying that across numerous time points throughout the female menstrual cycle, women's mean spatial performance significantly varied, but at its highest point, it was still below average male performance, meaning that at other points the difference was significantly larger. The exact size of the difference is irrelevant to the fact that it is causally tied to hormone fluctuations and always reliable lower than for males. Of course there is overlap in the distributions, and nothing I ever said implies otherwise. Thus, the link is evidence of what I said and falsifies your claim that I did not provide evidence for my claims.

So, cut the arrogance.

Faith is the epitome of arrogance, and blind ignorant faith is all you have, and its compelling you to irrationally deny clear cut facts that falsify your position.

 

[fromderinside]

I didn't believe there were as many red herrings as have been dragged across this thread. Accepting that, how about considering evidence without personal characterizing modifiers. Where is the place asserting one's arrogance comes in defining male female psychology?

 

[ronburgundy]

What you say when I fix it.

I don't think you intended what I found in the first bit when you wrote it. However when hooray is eliminated that's what remained.

More incoherent gibberish from you, as usual.

I agree Juma's opinion is not more valid that that of the researchers.

Juma's opinion is to that of the experts what a creationsit's opinion about evolution is to that of a biologist. He has no empirical basis for his view, they have a massive empirical basis, and you have offered zero rational basis to discount their scientific argument other than your dogmatic dismissal of cognitive science.

As for your responses of similar form to mine let me just remind you that my references are just as valid as are your references.

You have offered no references that are relevant to the causal influence of sex hormones on various psychological tasks.

Time or good or bad science doesn't make it good or bad.

As usual, WTF????? Your word-salad mixer is on high again.

Seems to me you are imputing capability in your interpretation of results when all they show are attained differences in performance. Even today we still presume, in psychology, environment is at least as likely to impact outcomes of mature individuals is genetic makeup.

Together, the various links I provided along with the research literature those links cite, show a causal influence of sex hormones on spatial tasks that is mediated by hormonal impact of particular brain regions and inter-region connectivity. Nothing I have said, denies that environment also has an impact, and in fact I have explicitly argued that it does. But the causal impact of sex hormones on the brain and cognitive and particular cognitive actions that those regions mediate is beyond reasonable doubt, given the current scientific evidence. It is mainstream consensus cognitive science.

Just let me drop this one in your nickers. I want to see how you react.

Females and Males Rely on Different Cortical Regions in Raven’s Matrices Reasoning Capacity: Evidence from a Voxel-Based Morphometry Study http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0093104

Abstract:

Raven’s Matrices test (RMT) is a non-verbal test designed to assess individuals’ ability to reason and solve new problems without relying extensively on declarative knowledge derived from schooling or previous experience. Despite a large number of behavioral studies that demonstrated gender differences in Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability, no neural evidence supported this difference. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used in an attempt to uncover the gender-specific neural basis of Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability as measured by the combined Raven’s Matrices test (CRT) in 370 healthy young adults. The behavioral results showed no difference between males and females. However, the VBM results showed that the relationship between reasoning ability and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. The association between CRT scores and rGMV in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with visuospatial ability) was significantly greater in males than in females, whereas the reverse was true for the inferior frontal cortex (relating to verbal reasoning ability) and the medial frontal cortex (engaged in information binding) where the association was greater in females. These findings suggest that males and females use differently structured brains in different ways to achieve similar levels of overall Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability.

There are no differences but there are difference in adult brain proportions .... have fun wiggling.

Interesting. It contradicts nothing I said, since I never made claims about general intelligence or whatever it is that Raven's Matrices tests. In fact, your reference only supports my more general point that males and female "have differently structured brains" and "use them in different ways".

Raven's is a complex reasoning task that is highly open to different strategies that depend differently on various underlying skills and aptitudes. Research shows that people that differ in their underlying skill, such as their working-memory-capacity (commonly understood to reflect control of attention in the face of distraction) use different strategies to perform the Raven's. IOW, you reference shows that men and women use different parts of their differently structured brain to solve Raven's problems, and other research suggest a reason they do this is that men and women differ in the underlying skills and abilities that different strategies require.

There is no problem for any of my arguments, if the genders don't differ on Raven's performance, but it turns out that they do, and your reference just used poor methods incapable of testing it.

Some strategies on the Raven's tend to be more effective than others on the Raven's and thus different strategy use often shows up as different performance scores (the above link also shows this). Thus, the different strategies employed by men and women might result in different scores. The lack of a performance score difference in your reference is not surprising, given that they only included and extremely non-representative sample people likely to be of very high intellectual ability, namely students at one of the more selective Universities in China. That massively constrains the observed variance in performance, making it unlikely to observe any differences in performance between any sub-groups. Their Raven's test had a top possible score of 72, yet their mean score was 66.25 with a standard deviation of 3.13, which mean few of their subjects were below the 90th percentile, and the mean was less than 2 standard deviations from to highest possible score (which means a truncated range and non-normal distribution).

In addition, the study eliminated all people that are not right-handed, and men are 23% more likely to be right-handed.. This matters, because handedness reflects neural differences that predict variance in performance on many kinds of cognitive tasks, including Raven's. IOW, your references used biased sampling methods that made differences unlikely due to lack of variance, plus disproportionately eliminated males that are generally above average at Raven's.

Meta-analyses that combine results across many samples show that there is in fact a difference in Raven's performance, but it only emerges around age 15, but then it the difference favoring males (about .33 standard deviations) remains rather steady for the rest of adulthood. Gee, I wonder what occurs just before age 15 that changes people's brains for the rest of their life? On yeah, puberty and the massive increase in the brain's exposure to sex hormones.

In sum, no "wiggling" required, just sound reasoning and application of relevant knowledge. You should try it.

 

[Juma]

No. It is the researchers summarize the statistical facts about the empirical results of the study.

No, that is not a result of the study since it the was never designed to compare male and female performance.

No, they are saying that across numerous time points throughout the female menstrual cycle, women's mean spatial performance significantly varied, but at its highest point, it was still below average male performance.

(Which would invalidate the entire study since that is obviously bullshit.)

Provide a citation that actually says this, because the provided one does definitily not.

 

[ronburgundy]

No, they are saying that across numerous time points throughout the female menstrual cycle, women's mean spatial performance significantly varied, but at its highest point, it was still below average male performance.

(Which would invalidate the entire study since that is obviously bullshit.)

IOW, it contradicts your purely faith based belief, therefore it must be invalid. There is nothing theoretically or empirically implausible about it at all. It coheres perfectly with the scientific literature more generally. They selected spatial task for which there was already a mountain of evidence for a reliable male advantage, meaning that across many samples, the average male performance was significantly higher than for females. It makes perfect sense that if the task previously and in the decades since has consistently shown a benefit for males, then even when the female average performance was at its highest due to being in cycle stage low in Estrogen and high is Testosterone, it would still be below that of males. It makes even more sense, in light of the numerous studies since that further support a strong causal role of sex-linked hormones on such cognitive tasks, and that women's lowest avg cyclical level of Estrogen is still higher than the male average, and the inverse for Testosterone.

This does not mean that not a single woman performs better than the male average. Again, nothing I ever said implies or presumes that.

Provide a citation that actually says this, because the provided one does definitily not.

If you bothered to read the article, you would note that when you include the sentence right before the one I quoted, the article says:
[P]
"the women were better on tasks involving spatial relationships when estrogen levels were low than when the levels were high.
Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."[/P]


That same idea is then repeated and further specified later in the article:

[P]"Over all, Dr. Kimura said, women seem to close about half the gap between average male and female spatial abilities in their low estrogen days."
[/P]

This logically means that the best avg female performance during low estrogen was still below that of males, but specifies that the size of the difference is about half.

BTW, the article also points out that the mirror opposite pattern is found for different types of tasks, such as verbal based tasks where women outperform men and that benefit is greatest when Estrogen levels are high. It isn't about general superiority is skills. It is about different average skill levels that vary with task.

 

[fromderinside]

Just let me drop this one in your nickers. I want to see how you react.

Females and Males Rely on Different Cortical Regions in Raven’s Matrices Reasoning Capacity: Evidence from a Voxel-Based Morphometry Study http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0093104

Abstract:

Raven’s Matrices test (RMT) is a non-verbal test designed to assess individuals’ ability to reason and solve new problems without relying extensively on declarative knowledge derived from schooling or previous experience. Despite a large number of behavioral studies that demonstrated gender differences in Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability, no neural evidence supported this difference. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used in an attempt to uncover the gender-specific neural basis of Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability as measured by the combined Raven’s Matrices test (CRT) in 370 healthy young adults. The behavioral results showed no difference between males and females. However, the VBM results showed that the relationship between reasoning ability and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. The association between CRT scores and rGMV in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with visuospatial ability) was significantly greater in males than in females, whereas the reverse was true for the inferior frontal cortex (relating to verbal reasoning ability) and the medial frontal cortex (engaged in information binding) where the association was greater in females. These findings suggest that males and females use differently structured brains in different ways to achieve similar levels of overall Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability.

There are no differences but there are difference in adult brain proportions .... have fun wiggling.

Raven's is a complex reasoning task that is highly open to different strategies that depend differently on various underlying skills and aptitudes. Research shows that people that differ in their underlying skill, such as their working-memory-capacity (commonly understood to reflect control of attention in the face of distraction) use different strategies to perform the Raven's. IOW, you reference shows that men and women use different parts of their differently structured brain to solve Raven's problems, and other research suggest a reason they do this is that men and women differ in the underlying skills and abilities that different strategies require.

There is no problem for any of my arguments, if the genders don't differ on Raven's performance, but it turns out that they do, and your reference just used poor methods incapable of testing it.

In addition, the study eliminated all people that are not right-handed, and men are 23% more likely to be right-handed.. This matters, because handedness reflects neural differences that predict variance in performance on many kinds of cognitive tasks, including Raven's. IOW, your references used biased sampling methods that made differences unlikely due to lack of variance, plus disproportionately eliminated males that are generally above average at Raven's.

Meta-analyses that combine results across many samples show that there is in fact a difference in Raven's performance, but it only emerges around age 15, but then it the difference favoring males (about .33 standard deviations) remains rather steady for the rest of adulthood. Gee, I wonder what occurs just before age 15 that changes people's brains for the rest of their life? On yeah, puberty and the massive increase in the brain's exposure to sex hormones.

In sum, no "wiggling" required, just sound reasoning and application of relevant knowledge. You should try it.

Quite a lot of wiggling there.

The technique was developed to factor our as many environmental factors as possible providing a level playing field for evaluating male female competence. Those items you point to are those taken out so meta analysis evaluation could be unbiased vis a vis competence. Handedness is clearly related to early training where females are more controlled than males. Similarly, three dimensional and language factors are environmentally dominated by training and environment. The fact remains that both sexes performed similarly on the target task. Of course sex hormones set sex attributes. What matters is that both sexes perform competently in the neutered task telling us both sexes are equally competent whatever the modes they use to get er done.

You have provided nothing to show that it is the nature of being boy or girl that determine three dimensional mastery. In fact that very pathway was shown to be not effective in overall performance.

All that being said, I don't deny there is probably some genetic basis for dimensional and language proficiency difference in males and females. However it is more boys are trained one way and girls are trained another that leads to more or less participation by each in college. Women perform well enough and men perform well enough to populate both the spatial and textual disciplines in college. So just cut it with the genes. Your studies are wish fulfilment for your hypothesis.

Your vary denial of measures taken in the cited experiment should be evidence enough to even you of that.

 

[Juma]

(Which would invalidate the entire study since that is obviously bullshit.)

IOW, it contradicts your purely faith based belief, therefore it must be invalid. There is nothing theoretically or empirically implausible about it at all. It coheres perfectly with the scientific literature more generally. They selected spatial task for which there was already a mountain of evidence for a reliable male advantage, meaning that across many samples, the average male performance was significantly higher than for females. It makes perfect sense that if the task previously and in the decades since has consistently shown a benefit for males, then even when the female average performance was at its highest due to being in cycle stage low in Estrogen and high is Testosterone, it would still be below that of males. It makes even more sense, in light of the numerous studies since that further support a strong causal role of sex-linked hormones on such cognitive tasks, and that women's lowest avg cyclical level of Estrogen is still higher than the male average, and the inverse for Testosterone.

This does not mean that not a single woman performs better than the male average. Again, nothing I ever said implies or presumes that.

Provide a citation that actually says this, because the provided one does definitily not.

If you bothered to read the article, you would note that when you include the sentence right before the one I quoted, the article says:
[P]
"the women were better on tasks involving spatial relationships when estrogen levels were low than when the levels were high.
Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."[/P]


That same idea is then repeated and further specified later in the article:

[P]"Over all, Dr. Kimura said, women seem to close about half the gap between average male and female spatial abilities in their low estrogen days."
[/P]

This logically means that the best avg female performance during low estrogen was still below that of males, but specifies that the size of the difference is about half.

BTW, the article also points out that the mirror opposite pattern is found for different types of tasks, such as verbal based tasks where women outperform men and that benefit is greatest when Estrogen levels are high. It isn't about general superiority is skills. It is about different average skill levels that vary with task.

I'm still waiting for you to provide data from this study that shows that women is half as good on spatial tasks than men.

 

[barbos]

Just let me drop this one in your nickers. I want to see how you react.

Females and Males Rely on Different Cortical Regions in Raven’s Matrices Reasoning Capacity: Evidence from a Voxel-Based Morphometry Study http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0093104

Abstract:

Raven’s Matrices test (RMT) is a non-verbal test designed to assess individuals’ ability to reason and solve new problems without relying extensively on declarative knowledge derived from schooling or previous experience. Despite a large number of behavioral studies that demonstrated gender differences in Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability, no neural evidence supported this difference. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used in an attempt to uncover the gender-specific neural basis of Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability as measured by the combined Raven’s Matrices test (CRT) in 370 healthy young adults. The behavioral results showed no difference between males and females. However, the VBM results showed that the relationship between reasoning ability and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. The association between CRT scores and rGMV in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with visuospatial ability) was significantly greater in males than in females, whereas the reverse was true for the inferior frontal cortex (relating to verbal reasoning ability) and the medial frontal cortex (engaged in information binding) where the association was greater in females. These findings suggest that males and females use differently structured brains in different ways to achieve similar levels of overall Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability.

There are no differences but there are difference in adult brain proportions .... have fun wiggling.

Raven's is a complex reasoning task that is highly open to different strategies that depend differently on various underlying skills and aptitudes. Research shows that people that differ in their underlying skill, such as their working-memory-capacity (commonly understood to reflect control of attention in the face of distraction) use different strategies to perform the Raven's. IOW, you reference shows that men and women use different parts of their differently structured brain to solve Raven's problems, and other research suggest a reason they do this is that men and women differ in the underlying skills and abilities that different strategies require.

There is no problem for any of my arguments, if the genders don't differ on Raven's performance, but it turns out that they do, and your reference just used poor methods incapable of testing it.

In addition, the study eliminated all people that are not right-handed, and men are 23% more likely to be right-handed.. This matters, because handedness reflects neural differences that predict variance in performance on many kinds of cognitive tasks, including Raven's. IOW, your references used biased sampling methods that made differences unlikely due to lack of variance, plus disproportionately eliminated males that are generally above average at Raven's.

Meta-analyses that combine results across many samples show that there is in fact a difference in Raven's performance, but it only emerges around age 15, but then it the difference favoring males (about .33 standard deviations) remains rather steady for the rest of adulthood. Gee, I wonder what occurs just before age 15 that changes people's brains for the rest of their life? On yeah, puberty and the massive increase in the brain's exposure to sex hormones.

In sum, no "wiggling" required, just sound reasoning and application of relevant knowledge. You should try it.

Quite a lot of wiggling there.

The technique was developed to factor our as many environmental factors as possible providing a level playing field for evaluating male female competence. Those items you point to are those taken out so meta analysis evaluation could be unbiased vis a vis competence. Handedness is clearly related to early training where females are more controlled than males. Similarly, three dimensional and language factors are environmentally dominated by training and environment. The fact remains that both sexes performed similarly on the target task. Of course sex hormones set sex attributes. What matters is that both sexes perform competently in the neutered task telling us both sexes are equally competent whatever the modes they use to get er done.

You have provided nothing to show that it is the nature of being boy or girl that determine three dimensional mastery. In fact that very pathway was shown to be not effective in overall performance.

All that being said, I don't deny there is probably some genetic basis for dimensional and language proficiency difference in males and females. However it is more boys are trained one way and girls are trained another that leads to more or less participation by each in college. Women perform well enough and men perform well enough to populate both the spatial and textual disciplines in college. So just cut it with the genes. Your studies are wish fulfilment for your hypothesis.

Your vary denial of measures taken in the cited experiment should be evidence enough to even you of that.

So your argument boils down to "men and women scored the same on some reasoning test therefore they have identical reasoning abilities"?
Did you know that when the original IQ test data was obtained women scored higher than men?

Women perform well enough and men perform well enough to populate both the spatial and textual disciplines in college

Since when 6 girls on 200 boys is "well enough"?

 

[fromderinside]

So your argument boils down to "men and women scored the same on some reasoning test therefore they have identical reasoning abilities"?
Did you know that when the original IQ test data was obtained women scored higher than men?

Women perform well enough and men perform well enough to populate both the spatial and textual disciplines in college

Since when 6 girls on 200 boys is "well enough"?

I'm with you barbos.

I didn't say nor did the authors say performance would be identical. I wrote, and the authors wrote, performance would be equivalent given the possibilities for problem solutions.

My whole argument centers around environmental factors driving boys one way and girls another. So correcting expectations should eventually lead to similar participation by boys and girls in domains dominated by one or the other today. Its not a fixed thing the extremes in participation in certain fields.

 

[ronburgundy]

Just let me drop this one in your nickers. I want to see how you react.

Females and Males Rely on Different Cortical Regions in Raven’s Matrices Reasoning Capacity: Evidence from a Voxel-Based Morphometry Study http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0093104

Abstract:

Raven’s Matrices test (RMT) is a non-verbal test designed to assess individuals’ ability to reason and solve new problems without relying extensively on declarative knowledge derived from schooling or previous experience. Despite a large number of behavioral studies that demonstrated gender differences in Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability, no neural evidence supported this difference. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used in an attempt to uncover the gender-specific neural basis of Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability as measured by the combined Raven’s Matrices test (CRT) in 370 healthy young adults. The behavioral results showed no difference between males and females. However, the VBM results showed that the relationship between reasoning ability and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. The association between CRT scores and rGMV in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with visuospatial ability) was significantly greater in males than in females, whereas the reverse was true for the inferior frontal cortex (relating to verbal reasoning ability) and the medial frontal cortex (engaged in information binding) where the association was greater in females. These findings suggest that males and females use differently structured brains in different ways to achieve similar levels of overall Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability.

There are no differences but there are difference in adult brain proportions .... have fun wiggling.

Raven's is a complex reasoning task that is highly open to different strategies that depend differently on various underlying skills and aptitudes. Research shows that people that differ in their underlying skill, such as their working-memory-capacity (commonly understood to reflect control of attention in the face of distraction) use different strategies to perform the Raven's. IOW, you reference shows that men and women use different parts of their differently structured brain to solve Raven's problems, and other research suggest a reason they do this is that men and women differ in the underlying skills and abilities that different strategies require.

There is no problem for any of my arguments, if the genders don't differ on Raven's performance, but it turns out that they do, and your reference just used poor methods incapable of testing it.

In addition, the study eliminated all people that are not right-handed, and men are 23% more likely to be right-handed.. This matters, because handedness reflects neural differences that predict variance in performance on many kinds of cognitive tasks, including Raven's. IOW, your references used biased sampling methods that made differences unlikely due to lack of variance, plus disproportionately eliminated males that are generally above average at Raven's.

Meta-analyses that combine results across many samples show that there is in fact a difference in Raven's performance, but it only emerges around age 15, but then it the difference favoring males (about .33 standard deviations) remains rather steady for the rest of adulthood. Gee, I wonder what occurs just before age 15 that changes people's brains for the rest of their life? On yeah, puberty and the massive increase in the brain's exposure to sex hormones.

In sum, no "wiggling" required, just sound reasoning and application of relevant knowledge. You should try it.

Quite a lot of wiggling there.

The technique was developed to factor our as many environmental factors as possible providing a level playing field for evaluating male female competence. Those items you point to are those taken out so meta analysis evaluation could be unbiased vis a vis competence. Handedness is clearly related to early training where females are more controlled than males.

Wrong. Gender differences in handedness cannot be simply attributed to environment. Handedness is strongly associated with brain differences due not only to genes but to in-utero hormone exposure, and is correlated with other behavioral factors also impacted by neural hormone exposure, such as sexual orientation, gender identity, etc..
Large differences in handedness (males being 40% more likely to be left or mixed handed) have been observed in children at least as young as 4-5. The gender difference does not appear to be larger at early adulthood than early childhood, contrary to what is predicted by your social control explanation.
IOW, by eliminating non-right handers, they eliminated a biological difference between genders that is tied to neural differences related to the cognitive task they used.

Similarly, three dimensional and language factors are environmentally dominated by training and environment.

You'll need to explicate what this means and how it is relevant to anything under discussion. Oh, and its absurd to deny the mountain of evidence that 3-D spatial skills and language proficiency are purely environmentally determined.


The fact remains that both sexes performed similarly on the target task. Of course sex hormones set sex attributes.

What matters is that both sexes perform competently in the neutered task telling us both sexes are equally competent whatever the modes they use to get er done.

No, they do not perform equally. The meta-analysis I cited shows that males perform better from around age 15 throughout adulthood. The similar performance in your single study is due to the fact that nearly all the subjects were above the 90th percentile in performance. Such limited range and variability in performance eliminates the opportunity to observe covariance between performance and other variables like gender, and means that your sample is extremely non-representative of what is true of males and females generally.

In addition, equal performance is not all that matters. The study showed differences in strategies used to complete the task and other research shows that such different strategy use is tied to different underlying cognitive skills required for various strategies. Thus, the study results are fully coherent with the mountain of other data showing gender differences in various basis skills. The fact that some complex tasks like Ravens can be performed using different combos of underlying skills is not at all a problem for anything I have said, especially when those alternate combos only produce equal performance among extreme non-representative samples with very high level of intellect and proven problem solving abilities.

All that being said, I don't deny there is probably some genetic basis for dimensional and language proficiency difference in males and females. However it is more boys are trained one way and girls are trained another that leads to more or less participation by each in college. Women perform well enough and men perform well enough to populate both the spatial and textual disciplines in college.

Participation in various professions has not been my point. I have said that many gender differences in professions are likely not due to biological differences.
However, science suggests that you are wrong in denying some role for such differences in some areas, with science professions being among them. Spatial abilities predict who succeeds in various college courses where it is an obvious benefit to be able to spatial represent the phenomena being learned, and it accounts for some of the gender gap in females doing more poorly and not continuing in these course. Studies have causally narrowed that gap by employing instruction methods that provide alternative non-spatial ways to represent and solve the problems, such as in chemistry.

Your vary denial of measures taken in the cited experiment should be evidence enough to even you of that.

I did not deny any measures. I simply paid attention to the objective properties of the sample which show that the null difference in performance was largely guaranteed by the use of such an extreme non-representative sample, and that the same measure does produce gender differences when more representative samples are examined.
You ignored the measures that don't support your faith, namely the differences in strategies used, which other research shows is tied to differences in the basic abilities those strategies require.

 

[ronburgundy]

IOW, it contradicts your purely faith based belief, therefore it must be invalid. There is nothing theoretically or empirically implausible about it at all. It coheres perfectly with the scientific literature more generally. They selected spatial task for which there was already a mountain of evidence for a reliable male advantage, meaning that across many samples, the average male performance was significantly higher than for females. It makes perfect sense that if the task previously and in the decades since has consistently shown a benefit for males, then even when the female average performance was at its highest due to being in cycle stage low in Estrogen and high is Testosterone, it would still be below that of males. It makes even more sense, in light of the numerous studies since that further support a strong causal role of sex-linked hormones on such cognitive tasks, and that women's lowest avg cyclical level of Estrogen is still higher than the male average, and the inverse for Testosterone.

This does not mean that not a single woman performs better than the male average. Again, nothing I ever said implies or presumes that.

Provide a citation that actually says this, because the provided one does definitily not.

If you bothered to read the article, you would note that when you include the sentence right before the one I quoted, the article says:
[P]
"the women were better on tasks involving spatial relationships when estrogen levels were low than when the levels were high.
Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."[/P]


That same idea is then repeated and further specified later in the article:

[P]"Over all, Dr. Kimura said, women seem to close about half the gap between average male and female spatial abilities in their low estrogen days."
[/P]

This logically means that the best avg female performance during low estrogen was still below that of males, but specifies that the size of the difference is about half.

BTW, the article also points out that the mirror opposite pattern is found for different types of tasks, such as verbal based tasks where women outperform men and that benefit is greatest when Estrogen levels are high. It isn't about general superiority is skills. It is about different average skill levels that vary with task.

I'm still waiting for you to provide data from this study that shows that women is half as good on spatial tasks than men.

Keep waiting, because I never said that. Try taking off your emotional faith goggles and trying to actually comprehend my argument rather than trying to manufacture excuses to dismiss it.

 

[ronburgundy]

So your argument boils down to "men and women scored the same on some reasoning test therefore they have identical reasoning abilities"?
Did you know that when the original IQ test data was obtained women scored higher than men?

Since when 6 girls on 200 boys is "well enough"?

I'm with you barbos.

I didn't say nor did the authors say performance would be identical. I wrote, and the authors wrote, performance would be equivalent given the possibilities for problem solutions.

My whole argument centers around environmental factors driving boys one way and girls another.

And yet you don't provide any evidence for that. Instead, you present evidence that you misinterpret as such, even though it is fully consistent with and supportive of biological differences when combined with the rest of the literature.

Of course there are environmental factors too. No one denies this. It is you taking the extremist position that biology plays no role, despite massive evidence showing it does.

 

[Juma]

IOW, it contradicts your purely faith based belief, therefore it must be invalid. There is nothing theoretically or empirically implausible about it at all. It coheres perfectly with the scientific literature more generally. They selected spatial task for which there was already a mountain of evidence for a reliable male advantage, meaning that across many samples, the average male performance was significantly higher than for females. It makes perfect sense that if the task previously and in the decades since has consistently shown a benefit for males, then even when the female average performance was at its highest due to being in cycle stage low in Estrogen and high is Testosterone, it would still be below that of males. It makes even more sense, in light of the numerous studies since that further support a strong causal role of sex-linked hormones on such cognitive tasks, and that women's lowest avg cyclical level of Estrogen is still higher than the male average, and the inverse for Testosterone.

This does not mean that not a single woman performs better than the male average. Again, nothing I ever said implies or presumes that.

Provide a citation that actually says this, because the provided one does definitily not.

If you bothered to read the article, you would note that when you include the sentence right before the one I quoted, the article says:
[P]
"the women were better on tasks involving spatial relationships when estrogen levels were low than when the levels were high.
Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."[/P]


That same idea is then repeated and further specified later in the article:

[P]"Over all, Dr. Kimura said, women seem to close about half the gap between average male and female spatial abilities in their low estrogen days."
[/P]

This logically means that the best avg female performance during low estrogen was still below that of males, but specifies that the size of the difference is about half.

BTW, the article also points out that the mirror opposite pattern is found for different types of tasks, such as verbal based tasks where women outperform men and that benefit is greatest when Estrogen levels are high. It isn't about general superiority is skills. It is about different average skill levels that vary with task.

I'm still waiting for you to provide data from this study that shows that women is half as good on spatial tasks than men.

Keep waiting, because I never said that. Try taking off your emotional faith goggles and trying to actually comprehend my argument rather than trying to manufacture excuses to dismiss it.

Good of you to realize that. Cause you havent given any quantitative information about women vs men whatsoever. And that is because that studie isnt designed for that. Why is that so hard to admit?

If this issue is so well researched as you states, then you will not have any trouble finding a study that actually supports your statements.

 

[ronburgundy]

IOW, it contradicts your purely faith based belief, therefore it must be invalid. There is nothing theoretically or empirically implausible about it at all. It coheres perfectly with the scientific literature more generally. They selected spatial task for which there was already a mountain of evidence for a reliable male advantage, meaning that across many samples, the average male performance was significantly higher than for females. It makes perfect sense that if the task previously and in the decades since has consistently shown a benefit for males, then even when the female average performance was at its highest due to being in cycle stage low in Estrogen and high is Testosterone, it would still be below that of males. It makes even more sense, in light of the numerous studies since that further support a strong causal role of sex-linked hormones on such cognitive tasks, and that women's lowest avg cyclical level of Estrogen is still higher than the male average, and the inverse for Testosterone.

This does not mean that not a single woman performs better than the male average. Again, nothing I ever said implies or presumes that.

Provide a citation that actually says this, because the provided one does definitily not.

If you bothered to read the article, you would note that when you include the sentence right before the one I quoted, the article says:
[P]
"the women were better on tasks involving spatial relationships when estrogen levels were low than when the levels were high.
Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."[/P]


That same idea is then repeated and further specified later in the article:

[P]"Over all, Dr. Kimura said, women seem to close about half the gap between average male and female spatial abilities in their low estrogen days."
[/P]

This logically means that the best avg female performance during low estrogen was still below that of males, but specifies that the size of the difference is about half.

BTW, the article also points out that the mirror opposite pattern is found for different types of tasks, such as verbal based tasks where women outperform men and that benefit is greatest when Estrogen levels are high. It isn't about general superiority is skills. It is about different average skill levels that vary with task.

I'm still waiting for you to provide data from this study that shows that women is half as good on spatial tasks than men.

Keep waiting, because I never said that. Try taking off your emotional faith goggles and trying to actually comprehend my argument rather than trying to manufacture excuses to dismiss it.

Good of you to realize that. Cause you havent given any quantitative information about women vs men whatsoever. And that is because that studie isnt designed for that. Why is that so hard to admit?

If this issue is so well researched as you states, then you will not have any trouble finding a study that actually supports your statements.

The statements that I actually made are supported by the studies I provided. The only thing unsupported are the irrelevant strawmen you invented because you have have no ability to counter what I actually said and the evidence I provided to support it.

 

[Juma]

IOW, it contradicts your purely faith based belief, therefore it must be invalid. There is nothing theoretically or empirically implausible about it at all. It coheres perfectly with the scientific literature more generally. They selected spatial task for which there was already a mountain of evidence for a reliable male advantage, meaning that across many samples, the average male performance was significantly higher than for females. It makes perfect sense that if the task previously and in the decades since has consistently shown a benefit for males, then even when the female average performance was at its highest due to being in cycle stage low in Estrogen and high is Testosterone, it would still be below that of males. It makes even more sense, in light of the numerous studies since that further support a strong causal role of sex-linked hormones on such cognitive tasks, and that women's lowest avg cyclical level of Estrogen is still higher than the male average, and the inverse for Testosterone.

This does not mean that not a single woman performs better than the male average. Again, nothing I ever said implies or presumes that.

Provide a citation that actually says this, because the provided one does definitily not.

If you bothered to read the article, you would note that when you include the sentence right before the one I quoted, the article says:
[P]
"the women were better on tasks involving spatial relationships when estrogen levels were low than when the levels were high.
Even at their best, the women as a group did not perform as well as men do, on average, with spatial tasks, the researchers said."[/P]


That same idea is then repeated and further specified later in the article:

[P]"Over all, Dr. Kimura said, women seem to close about half the gap between average male and female spatial abilities in their low estrogen days."
[/P]

This logically means that the best avg female performance during low estrogen was still below that of males, but specifies that the size of the difference is about half.

BTW, the article also points out that the mirror opposite pattern is found for different types of tasks, such as verbal based tasks where women outperform men and that benefit is greatest when Estrogen levels are high. It isn't about general superiority is skills. It is about different average skill levels that vary with task.

I'm still waiting for you to provide data from this study that shows that women is half as good on spatial tasks than men.

Keep waiting, because I never said that. Try taking off your emotional faith goggles and trying to actually comprehend my argument rather than trying to manufacture excuses to dismiss it.

Good of you to realize that. Cause you havent given any quantitative information about women vs men whatsoever. And that is because that studie isnt designed for that. Why is that so hard to admit?

If this issue is so well researched as you states, then you will not have any trouble finding a study that actually supports your statements.

The statements that I actually made are supported by the studies I provided. The only thing unsupported are the irrelevant strawmen you invented because you have have no ability to counter what I actually said and the evidence I provided to support it.

Ok let us simplify this: can you provide any study that shows that men are significantly better than women on spatial tasks. (And by significantly i mean that the mean for men shall be 0.1*T higher than the mean for women, where T is the smallest interval containing 95% of the womens results.)