Investigation into the physiological and psychological differences between developing boys and girls.

There are many clear differences between men and women, however, when we think of young boys and girls we have a tendency to think that there isn't too much that separates them. Since the 70's we've been bombarded with feminist inspired theories that any differences between the sexes are socially constructed. Consequently the advice to parents and teachers as been to switch the traditional gender stereotypes. For example, giving girls the toy cars and getting boys a little pram with a baby-doll in it. There has been a fair amount of research during this same time period indicating that the reason boys like cars and girls like dolls is because of differences at the genetic level and that the difference in the way boys and girls perceive the world is much greater than we had previously guessed.

We have known for some time that mature adult brains differ according to gender. The functions in the male brains are more compartmentalized while in female brains they are more holistic. Up until very recently the scientific community explained these differences as been due to hormonal differences. This belief reinforced the view that differences between the sexes were negligible before puberty.

Different Brains.

In 2004 scientist at UCLA examined a 'lateral gynandromorphic hermaphrodite' bird. Basically, every cell of this birds body was male on the right and female on the left. However, the blood contained a mixture of male and female hormones. If the conventional thought at the time was correct there should have been little difference between the two hemispheres of the brain. But there was, the two sides were dramatically different from each other. The scientists who studied this bird concluded that male and female brain tissue is “intrinsically different” because of the sex chromosome and not sex hormones. The difference is genetic, so young boys and girls brains are already different at day one.

[ARNOLD and BURGOYNE, “Are XX and XY Brain cells Intrinsically Different?” Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2004]

Hearing Ability.

A study done on the effect of music therapy on premature babies in the late 80's revealed more physiological variation between the sexes. The babies were played soft music in their cribs along with a control group that heard no music. An unexpected discovery was made. Girls on average left the hospital nine and a half days earlier than the control group. Whereas, with boys the music had no effect at all. A follow up study done with humming a lullaby revealed a more dramatic difference with the girls leaving hospital around twelve days earlier while the sound still appeared not to have any observable effect on the boys. The researchers concluded that the most “plausible explanation was that the boys simply could not hear the music as well or in the same way as the girls.”

[CAINE, “The Effects of Music on the Selected Stress Behaviors in a Newborn I.C.U.” Journal of Music Therapy, 1991]

With the advances in technology experienced in our time we are now able to see the response of the brain as music is played. A more recent study of 350 newborns used this brain imaging technology to track the 'acoustic brain response' across the full spectrum. Their findings were that girls had substantially more sensitive hearing “especially in the 1000-4000Hz range (soft sounds) which is important for speech discrimination”. Confirming that girls do in fact hear better than boys, further studies on older children and adults reveal that this gap also increases with age.

[CASSIDY and DITTY, “Gender Differences among Newborns on a Transient Otoacoustic Emissions Test for Hearing,” Journal of Music Therapy, 2001.]

This has important implications in the classroom where status for boys is often structured from the back of the class forward. The boys may simply be out of range of the teacher speaking in a soft voice.

Visual Differences.

It has been well documented that females are more adept at interpreting facial expressions and few would dispute it. Scientists at Cambridge University set out to discover if this was innate or a consequence of social factors. They set up an experiment where they dangled a mobile that would slowly turn on the left side of a baby's field of vision and a smiling woman would be on the right. The 102 babies in the study had their eye movements recorded and analysed to determine which they preferred. It turned out that most of the girls favoured the woman's face while the boys were more than twice as likely to prefer the mobile. They concluded that it was “beyond reasonable doubt that sex differences in social interest are, in part, biological in origin”

[CONNELLAN and BARON-COHEN, “Sex Differences in Human Neonatal Social Perception,” Infant Behavior & Development, 2000.]

The answer lies in the anatomy of the eye. The eye is divided into layers, in one of these layers (the ganglion layer) there are two types of cell. Small P – cells and much larger M – cells. P – cells take in information about texture and colour while M – cells compile information about direction and movement. Basically P – cells answer the question “what is it?” and the M – cells are for “where is it and where's it going?” The male retina is considerably thicker than the female because it is made up of of mostly M – cells, whereas females have mostly P – cells.

[KAPLAN and BENARDETE, “The Dynamics of Primate Retinal Ganglion Cells,” Progress in Brain Research, 2001.]

This serves to at least partially explain why the boys preferred to track the mobile; why they like to play with toys that require action and may be the reason why most boys seem to be predisposed to kinaesthetic learning. In light of this we can also understand why girls are more likely to appreciate objects for being colourful and richly textured. However, this difference in the ganglion layer has a knock on effect. The various receptor cells that are wired to the M-cells differ in ratio to the ones that are wired to P-cells so the effect is that boys prefer 'cold' colours such as black, grey, silver, and blue. Girls on the other hand, prefer 'warm' colours like red, orange, green and beige. Simply because they are wired to have an abundance of receptor cells for these respective colours.

I have observed in the classroom that praise for artwork tends to be more enthusiastic from the overwhelmingly female staff if it's colourful while the black scribble of a spaceship crashing into the moon gets an unenthusiastic “Oh, that's nice...how about adding a bit of colour to brighten it up?” It is this lack of understanding that can turn a boy off artistic activities as he quickly comes to realise that he has to change his approach to suit the female eye. To test this theory, I set up an experiment in the class room where I created 2 bunches of coloured crayons – one with the warm colours described above, the other with the cold colours. I then allowed the children to choose a picture to colour in – 3 of the pictures were of some sort of action (verbs) the other 3 were of objects (nouns). According to the research on the anatomy of the eye, we should find that most boys prefer drawing verbs with the cold colours and most girls the nouns with the warm colours. XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX

Geometry and Navigation.

Scientists have discovered that males and females use different parts of their brain from each other when dealing with tasks involving geometry and navigation. Young men use the primitive nucleus deep inside our brain, the hippocampus. While females use the cerebral cortex for these tasks, the more advanced part at the front of the brain. The result is that when you ask a female for directions the typical response will be filled with landmarks you can see, hear or smell. Whereas a males are more likely to use absolute directions and distance. The opinion of brain experts is that the hippocampus acts somewhat like a G.P.S.

Maturation.

I sure we've all heard this opinion that girls mature on average 2 years faster than boys. And while it's true that certain areas of the brain mature faster in girls, there are also aspects in which boys mature before girls. To study this, Researchers examined brain activity in 508 children from the age 2 months to 16 years to show that the brain develops in a different sequence in boys compared with girls. They found that the areas of the brain involved with language and fine motor skills mature around 6 years earlier in girls. However, the area of the brain used for spatial memory and targeting mature around 4 years earlier in boys. Their conclusion was that it was too simple to claim that girls matured faster than boys and the truth was that while girls are maturing faster in some areas of the brain, the boys are maturing faster in others.

[HANLON, THATCHER and CLINE, “Gender Differences in the Development of EEG Coherence in Normal Children,” Developmental Neuropsychology, 1999]

When applying this to early education which still has its main focus reading and writing. Skills that are more appropriate con with the development of girls