Gender And Mental Rotation Essay

Differences related to gender in spatial memory are most widely described and studied of cognitive sex differences. In 1974 Maccoby and Jacklin established that males usually perform better than females in measures of spatial performance, and this discovery has been constantly replicated in multiple studies covering various developmental stages (McGivern et al. 1997; Lewin et al. 2001) and spatial tasks (Dabbs Jr. et al. 1998; Driscoll et al. 2005).

Differences in brain structure between males and females result in important differences in perceptions, emotional expressions, priorities and behaviors. (*) Relationship traits, problem solving approaches, mathematical abilities, reactions to stress, language, emotions, brain size, pain perception, spatial ability and susceptibility to disorders are just some areas in which men and women react differently because of their differences in brain structure. (*) To some scientists and theorists these many influential biological differences between men and women make gender roles inevitable. (*)

In her scientific work Sex Differences in the Brain Kimura analysis several key differences that cause men and women to excel in various tasks and jobs due to naturally occurring phenomenon in the body and

However, while these explanations are plausible, I made an assumption that, if inaccurate, could diminish the validity of my claims. Specifically, I made the assumption that gesture training alone, without necessarily producing gesture during mental rotation tasks, could serve to enhance mental rotation performance. Should signing individuals not spontaneously produce gesture when solving mental rotation tasks, then the gesture intrinsic in sign language may still act as inherent spatial training, but it may not be used as an advantageous strategy

An experiment at the University of California, Los Angeles proved interesting when a machine taught both boys and girls. The boys ended up scoring higher than when a woman taught them. I am wondering if girls scored higher than the boys did when male teachers teach them? I also wonder how the girls scored when taught by a machine; maybe they scored higher, too. At the secondary school level boys do perform better on technical or scientific subjects. Now this goes back to the first assumption that our brains work differently, or is it because more male teachers may teach these subjects? According to Mooney, teacher of the similar sex may have the "instinctive understanding that an adult will enjoy with a child who is going through a process which he or she went through too" (122). In other words, they can relate better with a child of the same sex. I am a female kindergarten teacher and also have a daughter who is six years old. I have no problem relating to the boys in my class. I think I can relate to any child who is five or six years old.

The SAT is an exam taken by high school sophomores, juniors and seniors, it measures literacy, writing and math skills that are needed to succeed in college. Male students have been viewed as benefiting from the math section of the SAT. “One test that has played a particularly important role in the impression that male students possess more math ability than female students is the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)” (Byrnes and Takahira., 1995). The authors focused on one question throughout their research they wanted to understand if the gender difference in the SAT were because male students perform cognitive questions more successfully than girls. Male students had the correct approach to answer math questions, they answered the questions in a specific

Among education in today’s world, statistics shows number of males and females in colleges and universities have widen. In my research, 57% of undergraduate degrees were awarded to women, only 43% to men. I found in my research that there are many factors that contribute to these stats. Men tend to get good jobs straight out of high school or during college. There are debatably more high paying jobs for a male high school graduate than a female, even though most of these jobs are mainly either hazardous, manufacturing based, physically demanding, or all the above. The gender techniques of how genders are taught in kindergarten through 12th grades. Research show that movement, particular in young boys in the motor stage of development,

There are many theories and approaches to gender in terms of biology and science in general, which aim to suggest or prove that gender is natural and inherent. The first of these is the effect of hormones, more specifically testosterone, which causes male behaviour patterns such as aggression, competitiveness and a higher sexual drive. Testosterone also helps in the development of the brain. The brain is divided into two hemispheres, a left and a right. The left side of the brain is specialised in language skills whereas the right hand side of the brain is used for more non-verbal such as spatial awareness skills. Shaywitz et al (1995) used MRI scans to examine the brain whilst males and females carried out language tasks of varying difficulties. It was found that females used both hemispheres of the brain to complete the task whereas males only used the

Other explanations for the variations include a large amount of estrogen hormones in females, which is the primary reason for the differences in the parts of a woman’s brain. According to Bruce Goldman, a science writer for the Stanford Medical School’s Office of Communication and Public Affairs, a woman’s hippocampus, a region of the brain that processes most learning and memorization, is generally bigger than a man’s and functions in a distinctive way. Better learning and memorization skills are especially important when it comes to schooling, which explains why every two men who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2010 were matched by three women achieving the same (Rosin 306). This is not the only variations between the brains of each gender; the corpus callosum, the white matter in the center of the brain that helps the left and right lobe “talk” to each other, is larger in females, thus the reason that womens’ brains unfailingly show stronger communication between hemispheres (Goldman). Activity between these halves are important for speech as well as comprehension. Different sizes of different parts of the brain are part of the reason why women are biologically more capable in certain fields of work than men.

Well, maybe it’s just because they are, or because of the enhanced memory and social cognition skills. This is saying we remember stuff better than the male part of our species. The males have higher local functional connectivity, while females have a more broad functional connectivity. Females have more between-hemispheric connectivity and cross-module participation predominated in females. That means that females are better at thinking things out or as people call it “seeing the different colors of the world, in shades of gray.” So, in technicalities, females have superior intellect. (Woolley et al., n.d., p.

As we all know, women and men are very different, exteriorly and interiorly. Our brains are wired differently, we process information differently, we react differently. Due to this fact, we multitask differently. Society normally says women have the upper hand when it comes to doing more than one thing at a time, and a lot of experiments can prove that statement to be true. In fact, I read quite a few that claimed that result but one specific example is an experiment I read on the Daily Mail website. Scientists in England conducted an experiment with 1,000 young men and women. They scanned each individual’s brain in an MRI machine and showed the differences. Females have stronger connections between the right and left sides of their

Also, in her article, Bonomo states, “males possess on average more than six times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence than females, while females have nearly ten times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than do males. One part of a male’s brain, the inferior parietal lobe, is larger than a female’s and is involved in spatial and mathematical reasoning, skills that boys tend to perform better than girls” (Bonomo, 2010); whereas, girls tend to perform better than boys in verbal and written language. Furthermore, “in 2007 a longitudinal study conducted by the National Institutes of Health demonstrated consistent sex differences in the speed of the brain’s maturation (Lenroot et al. 2007). It also showed that boys’ brains develop differently than girls’

The authors discuss how “girls and boys tend to have different cognitive strengths and weaknesses.” Specifically, girls excel at tasks relying on verbal and

2581). The questions of if and how gender plays a role in a person's STM capabilities and working memory is one that has been visited and revisited over time, but has generally yielded fairly consistent results: one sex does not dominate the other in terms of which has a more functional STM, rather, men and women maintain their own respective skills regarding different areas of STM ("Sex Differences in Memory"; Loftus et al. 82).

Gender differences occur in many aspects of a person’s life whether it is culture, politics, occupation, family and relationships, or the economy (just to name a few). One major difference in gender occurs in learning and education in the elementary and secondary levels. Research has found that males and females learn differently in many aspects of education. First of all, female and male brains are constructed differently affecting the way they learn; this leads to basic differences in learning and also gives an introduction into why the way one learns differs according to gender and how males and females learn subjects and tasks differently. Second, males and females are treated differently, sometimes unconsciously, in educational