Sex and gender 4: Cognition Flashcards
(53 cards)
What is Cahill’s (2019) argument against stopping sex and gender research due to the threat of neurosexism?
- “[…] by that logic we should also stop studying, for example, genetics. The potential to misuse new knowledge has been around since we discovered fire and invented the wheel. It is not a valid argument for remaining ignorant.” e.g. eugenics
- “[…] the real problem is a deeply ingrained, implicit, very powerful yet 100 percent false assumption that if women and men are to be considered “equal,” they have to be “the same.”
- Conversely, the argument goes, if neuroscience shows that women and men are not the same on average, then it somehow shows that they are not equal on average. Although this assumption is false, it still creates fear of sex differences in those operating on it. Ironically, forced sameness where two groups truly differ in some respect means forced inequality […]”
What processes are involved in visuospatial cognition? Are men or women better at these?
Visuospatial cognition is a range of processes including spatial perception, visualisation, generation/maintenance of spatial images, and mental rotation
Men are usually better
What gender difference effect sizes do these visuospatial tasks yield:
Mental rotation
Water level test
Line orientation task
Paper folding task
Mental rotation - large
Water level and line orientation - medium
Paper folding - small
Kheloui et al. (2023) argue that mental rotation tasks yield the largest and most consistent sex/gender difference – typically men outperform women in these tasks.
In Collins and Kimura (1997), what kinds of mental rotation tasks yielded the largest sex/gender difference effect size?
Sex/gender difference present in all versions of the task
Large effect sizes in all cases, but particularly in the 2-D tasks
Less difference for 2D easy - seems to be an impact of difficulty
Suggests that the sex/gender differences isn’t related to better 3-D processing skills, but there does seem to be an effect of difficulty
Do meta-analyses find large effect sizes for mental rotation gender differences?
Yes
- Linn & Petersen (1985) meta-analysis of 172 studies covering a range of visuospatial tasks, medium to large effect sizes found favouring men for mental rotation and spatial perception. No difference found in other tasks.
- Voyer (1995) meta-analysis of 246 studies, large effect size favouring men for mental rotation.
In what kinds of visuospatial tasks do women outperform men?
Tests of spatial location memory
i.e. judging if objects are in the same location in two pictures
- Voyer et al. (2007) meta-analysis of 36 studies and 86 effect sizes - Significant sex/gender difference in favour of women found consistently across age, scoring methods, type of measure. - Some interaction with object type (e.g., men better with ‘masculine’ objects) - environmental cues may be important
What different types of verbal abilities are there?
Verbal abilities include reading comprehension, spelling, writing performance, verbal memory and verbal fluency
What is verbal memory?
Memory for words, recall of words, verbal items, language-based memory
What is verbal fluency?
Like verbal memory as it includes elements of recall, essentially the ease with which someone can produce verbal information. Can be subdivided into letter fluency and category fluency
- Give ppts category - they have to write down as many words as they can that fit into that list
- Also, recall tests
What are effect sizes like for gender differences in verbal abilities?
Small generally
- Hyde & Lynn (1988) meta-analysis of 165 studies, very small effect (‘trivial’) sizes favouring women for a range of verbal tasks, including vocabulary, reading comp, speech production, essay writing, and general verbal ability, medium effect size for verbal fluency - Petersen (2018) meta-analysis that covered approx. 10 million students, small effect size favouring women for ‘English language arts’, and a medium effect size for reading and writing skills - Hirnstein et al. (2023) meta-analysis containing data from 355,173 participants, small (but consistent) effect size favouring women for phonemic fluency - Several meta-analyses report medium effect sizes favouring women for verbal fluency (e.g., Bleecker et al., 1988; Herlitz et al., 2013; Kramer et al., 1997; Lowe et al., 2003).
What happens to sex/gender differences in mental rotation and verbal fluency when age and education are controlled for?
Mathuranath et al. (2003) found no significant sex difference in either task, after controlling for age and education
- Level of education, but not age or gender, significantly influenced letter fluency.
- Older age inversely affected category fluency
- Age, but not education, had a differential effect on the tasks of verbal fluency, influencing category fluency more than letter fluency.
- But, no effect of sex/gender anywhere
What subprocesses make up attention?
Attention can be subdivided into several processes, including selective attention, sustained attention, divided attention, and executive attention.
Do women outperform men in tests of attentional ability?
Yes, although evidence is sparse and inconsistent
What is attention?
Attention abilities interact with sensory input via what three networks?
Attention = ability to focus on relevant stimuli
Orientation, signalling, and executive networks
Sex/gender studies into attention orientation
i.e., the ability to direct (or orient) attention in response to a cue (ability to ignore irrelevant distractions)
have shown that who is more susceptible to distractions?
- Some studies have shown that women are more susceptible to distraction by invalid cues (e.g., Merritt et al., 2007; Stoet, 2010)
- While others suggest the women’s use of cues depended on the type of cue used (e.g., better able to use valid cues than men) (e.g., Bayliss et al., 2005) - men ignore cues regardless of whether they are valid or invalid
Inconsistent results
Are men or women better at sustained and divided attention?
Men
Fewer studies have looked at sustained and divided attention, but those that have suggest that men are better in both types of attention task compared to women (e.g., Pletzer et al., 2017) but this finding is not consistently replicated
What are sex/gender differences in episodic and object location memory?
Women are better
- Voyer et al. (2007) meta-analysis reported that women outperform men on tests of episodic memory (recall of specific personal experiences) and object location memory, with small-medium effect sizes
What type of memory do men show more variance in than women?
Verbal and episodic spatial memory
What type of memory do women show more variance in than men?
Route memory
Do men or women do better in recall and recognition for verbal episodic memory?
Women, with small effect sizes
Are memory differences more consistent than other sex/gender differences?
Yes - tend to be (small effect sizes though)
However, there is some evidence that memory can be influenced by sex hormones (particularly estradiol and progesterone) particularly for those memory processes that involve cognitive control (e.g., working memory)
What were issues with findings that boys were generally better at mathematical tasks than girls?
Difference particularly pronounced at the upper end of the distribution, among students scoring 700+ boys outnumbered girls 13:1 (for every 13 top scoring boys, there was one girl) - higher the scores the bigger the difference
But this tends to be true for all sex/gender differences - higher scoring people differences
ISSUE - Presented as an educational “fact” that was independent of environmental consideration, boys were considered stronger in mathematics than girls.
Does recent evidence suggest that boys are better at maths?
It is unclear
Women/girls in school seem to achieve better marks in maths tests compared to men/boys (Voyer & Voyer, 2014)
- But maths yielded the smallest effect size and the effect sizes varied depending on contextual factors
- Several other meta-analyses report small effect sizes indicating a minor male advantage in mathematics (Else-Quest et al., 2010; Hedges & Nowell, 1995; Hyde et al., 1990)
What did early work into sex/gender differences in mathematical abilities fail to consider?
Failed to fully consider the ways in which boys were perhaps more strongly encouraged towards mathematics throughout their education.
- Presenting their findings as “fact” likely prompts the generation of gender stereotypes
