What are the three different areas of cognitive ability that researchers have examined extensively for sex differences? Describe the size and direction of sex differences within each of these areas. Note if there any exceptions to the general sex differences observed within each of these three domains of cognitive ability and why they do not display the typical sex difference.

Question

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Answer 1

Researchers have examined sex differences and verbal, math, and visual-spatial performance. In general, females tend to outperform males on verbal tasks with effect sizes ranging from small to moderate. The exception to this pattern is verbal reasoning which displays a very small male advantage or no sex difference. One possible reason for this exception is that verbal reasoning tasks often require people to transform verbal information mentally. Males tend to outperform females on spatial tasks with effect sizes ranging from moderate to large. One exception to this difference is in spatial location memory, which shows a small sex difference favoring females. One explanation from evolutionary psychology is that special location memory was especially important to ancestral women who often forage for food, vegetables, and roots over large geographic regions. There is great cross-cultural variability in sex differences in math performance, with only small differences favoring boys in complex math problems sometimes emerging in countries with low gender equality.