Monday, April 8, 2019

Gender Comparisons in Cognitive Abilities Essay Example for Free

Gender Comparisons in Cognitive Abilities EssayGender balances be not only discernible in physical and fruitful argonas as far as workforce and wo custody are concerned. These physical and reproductive differences are minimal in terms of the determinants of how men and women operate as far as early(a) issues relating to their cognition are concerned (Gur et al. 1999). Sex endocrines that are secreted during their development are responsible for the difference in nous brass sections of men and women. men and women contain been indicaten by several studies to learn differently due to the difference in their cognition. Kimura (2000) postulated that even at infancy, girls gaze at object lenss long-lived than boys an argument that gives premise to the point that boys convey attention problems. Their sensory systems fork up a discrepancy even at such a new-made age, something that persists into old age. In addition to the above, women tend to hark back some things h omogeneous land marks crack than the men who remember directions and distance.These are the spacial cues that the men are better off in as opposed to women (Kimura 2000). A myriad of an another(prenominal)(prenominal) differences have been suggested especially in linguistic, interpersonal, logical and mathematical, musical, intrapersonal and linguistic among other areas. As the environment starts acting on the individual boys and girls subsequently birth, they already have wired forelands that show differences in how they respond to the above areas that lead to the differences.The females and males differences in their intellectual faculties lie in their abilities rather than their scholarship Quotient, which may be the same in girls and boys, all other factors held constant but the sampled girls and boys will have differences in their linguistic and most probably their spatial abilities. Different areas of the conceiver are suited for sundry(a) tasks and which the males and females have differing usage abilities in. spatial differencesOn average, studies have make up that male outperform female in spatial activities/ spatial visualizations like in situations that require the rotation of objects in a habituated topographic point or in manipulation of objects in one way or another or ripe intellectual rotation. They are too able to outdo women in tasks which deal with maneuvering of their way through a maze of routes but this does not include grasping of landmarks for use as a means to remember their routes while women are able to recall landmarks to a greater extent than men brush aside.In addition to this, men are better off than women in the accuracy with which they taper objects either in movement or in their static positions. They also do healthful in disembedding hidden objects. This extends to interception or guiding of projectiles and ability to make headway any movements in the field of vision. This doing cuts across all ages as show n by Kaufman et. al (1999) that apply the Weischeler Adult Intelligence Scales-Revised (WAIS-R) in determining fluids and crystallized differences in men and women.The study states that the ability to target an object develops well before puberty. The performance of men and women on Block Design, digital Symbol and instruction showed that men outperformed women in Block Design and Information while women did better than men in Digital Symbol. Verbal smoothness In 2003, Shaywitz et al. were able to discern differences in sexual activity as far as the brains language functional formation is concerned. They used a study called the functional ring imaging and through this, females showed more(prenominal) abilities in verbal fluency than men.This included their manner of acquisition and longer spans of attention in conversation unlike men who lagged behind. They also tended to excel in memory tasks like fluency in generation of synonyms and better rapidity of identification of mat ching objects or items be incur their perception skills are better than those of their male counterparts (Shaywitz, B et al. (1995,). Kimura, 1996). They demonstrate better recall ability linked to verbal fluency than men in addition to having a higher episodic memory.They also show a great ability to reckon words that begin with a certain letter more than the men can do. The fields of priming, semantic and primary memories do not however show any difference in men and women. Men on the other hand showed better performance in semantic measures and a higher order in the crystallized factor of science. Due to the bigger cortical space in females assigned for language and its functions, there is little space leave for the working of the spatial space which implies that females cannot be better than men in both language and spatial abilities. Problem-Solving TasksThere are differences in gender as far as the brains problem-solving tasks are concerned as reported by Gur et al. (1999) that conducted various studies and presented test to a sample of men and women under same condition. The results were basis for the conclusion drawn. First, arithmetical differences tests showed that men are higher cognitive abilities in terms of mathematics calculations and reasoning than women. In this test, condition of mathematical based questions were asked to the selected sample men responded more accurate and quick than women who displayed slowness and inaccuracy in mensurable responses.In another experiment, a piece of paper was folded with a punched hole, and then the participants were asked to determine where punched hole shall happen upon if the paper shall be unfolded. Most men responded correctly and quickly in determining where the hole shall chance should the paper be opened than their female counterparts. Moreover, objects and images were placed before the participant and asked to rotate objects and manipulate the images. Men excelled better than women on this pr oblem-solving task.Lastly, studies show that when men and women are targeting or aiming at an object, men are more likely to get their target than women can. This implies that women are less accurate in target-directed motor skills for example intercepting projectiles. To depone this finding, the practical example that can be used to explain this target-direct motor skill is by load that men are good at target involving games like dart playing than women. Therefore, problem-solving task favors men than women in the sense that men perform better than women in spatial undertakings like tasks that involve mental rotating objects.Emotional get by Cognitive abilities of an individual to great extend help in transition of coping with stress or depression. The essence that facilitates connection between coping with emotions and cognitive abilities is because through use of intelligence that a person can think, perceive and react to the surrounding. In this regard, intelligence needed t o cope with emotions is delimit as cognitive ability and content of the thought which differ greatly in men than women (Shaywitz et al. 1999 Gur et al. 1999). The meta-analyses studies conducted found that men are less affected with emotions than women.For instance, women were found to be affected by maladaptive or negative thinking about an emotional problem than male. Men usually indulge in alcoholism, competitive behaviors and violent behaviors. While women are worse affected by the emotional since are usually demoralise and can develop various eating and psychological disorders like bulimic or anxiety. Differences in clearcutness in manual tasks Women are a bit faster than men in precision as far as some manual tasks like placing pegs in the holes on a given board. joined with their ability to recall the positions of objects more precisely than men, women show a greater likelihood of replacing an object to its initial position with a greater accuracy than men or state wheth er a given object had been displaced or not. Women therefore show a better fine motor coordination as compared to men The neuroanatomic difference in males and females has been found to contribute to cognitive abilities especially those that are sexual in nature. Females have XX genetic make-up while males have XY.These genes play a great billet in differentiation and it is due to the absence of the Y chromosome in females that leads to the liberate of androgens which are the male hormones. These hormones cause the female to develop. Some periods when there is the release of sex hormones, there is an impact in the brain which leads to differences in cognition from the periods when there is no hormonal release. Prenatal development period has shown the greatest levels of hormone release accord to several researches done (Shaywitz et. al 2003).During puberty the levels of the hormones do rise again and these fluctuations continue throughout ones life span. Research has established t hat girls who were exposed to high testosterone levels were shown to display greater spatial skills when compared with other girls who had not been exposed to the hormone. This shows that the male hormone testosterone is responsible for the spatial abilities that males have. Males show some setness at problem-solving in school more than females in addition to working out multiple prize tests better than females.Such examinations like SATs are performed in better by males than females who, apparently do well in written and un meterd tests while getting higher overall grades in their schooling years. Girls have also proved to be better performers in math than males up to high school level where they drop, an fount that has been attributed to the inclusion of m ore spatially oriented math in which the girls appear to be lower in performance than males (Shaywitz, B et al. 1995). Males are known to have a larger brain than females with a surface which is 10% larger than that of fema les.Some researches have indicated that there is a correlation between the size of the brain and intellectual abilities. The males brains have more cerebrospinal and white matter than the brains of females. More white matter according to Gur et. al 2000 (cited in Shaywitz et. al 2003) is responsible for the information transfer to other regions of the brain thus alter to their superb spatial abilities while the women who have more of the grey matter enhance greater bear upon capacity and efficiency.As has been stated earlier on, the brain is laterized such that one hemisphere dominate t6he other in a given or given fuction(s). The brains two halves are more laterized in the performance of some cognitive functions. In males, the laterization is more pronounced than in the females due to the neurohumoral interactions mediate by the testosterone hormone. Fourie and Stuart (2006) carried out an investigation on the role of gender and temperament in Functional hemispheric Asymmetry an d perception of emotional stimuli. In this investigation, they used a total population sample of 112 with females beingness 58 and men 54.The sample had four groups of students who were right-handed and chosen in terms of their gender, and temperament. Their levels of neuroticism, introversion and extraversion were measured using a personality questionnaire. The Divided Visual Field Technique, their differential hemisphere performance regarding latency and accuracy were determined. After the use of T-square test (Hotellings), the results showed that the accuracy in terms of the response time scores in men and women had a great difference in the way the two genders process their emotional stimuli.Women were found to do so faster and more accurately than their male counterparts in the touch on and response to emotional stimuli. There are also some gender differences in maladaptive thinking and coping with stressful situations. The risk of depression in men is 8-12% while in women it has been found to be between 20-26%. Disorders related to depression affect about 70% of women and 30% of men due to the fact that women show uncontrollability in perception more than men (Kaufman, 1999 Voyer, 2005).Individuals with unilateral brain lesions or damages were canvass (Inglis Lawson 2001) and it was found that males lost their verbal ability more than the females after both genders suffered damages in the left hemispheres. Men also lost their spatial abilities after a brain damage on their right hemispheres. Women were found to be better off than men in verbal ability even after suffering the same damage on either lobe. This justifies the fact that language and spatial abilities are bilaterally represented less in men than in women. Brain organizationThe human brain organization is an important part aligning for performing the cognitive tasks. The human brain has two hemispheres which are specialize in carry a specific kind of activity better that the other hemisphe re. Brain organization for male is more lateralized to its cognitive functions than women brain. The major difference in lateralization of the brain is the hormonal roles (Shaywitz, et al. 1999). For instance, the testerone hormone facilitates neurohormonal linkage during early stages of cognitive development creating dimorphism in cerebral (Kimura, 1992).On the other hand, women brain is less lateralized with more of its portion assigned to verbal or language tasks. In electrical activities, men show they use their right hemisphere for spatial activities as opposed to women who use their left hemisphere. Conclusion In conclusion, the paper has discussed with illustrations the major gender cognitive difference between men and women. In the discussion, the paper has Spatial differences, Verbal fluency, Problem-Solving Tasks, Emotional coping, Differences in precision in manual tasks, and Brain organization.However, a point of cost to note is that there is distinct difference between the female and male cognitive abilities which is influenced by brain structures such as hypothalamus region. Moreover, SDN (sexually dimorphic nucleus) is smaller in women while larger for males. References Gur, RC et al. (1999) Sex differences in brain correlations with cognitive performance diary of Neuroscience, 29, p. 4042-4059 Kimura, D. (2002). Sex, sex hormones and sexual orientation influence on human cognitive function Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 16, p. 261-268 Kimura, D. (1998).Sex differences in the brain, Scientific American, 10, p. 26-31 Kaufman, A et al. (1999), Intellectual increase pattern and decline across the adult life-span for women and men Journal of Clinical Psychology, 37, p. 759-802 Shaywitz, B et al. (1995), Sex differences in the functional organization of the brain for language Nature, 363, p. 595-610. Shaywitz, S et al. (1999). Estrogen changes functional organization of brain Journal of the American Medical Association, 271, p. 1103-11513. Voyer , D. (2005) A meta- analysis of Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities Psychological Bulletin, 107, p. 252-273

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