COGNITIVE GENDER DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN

用于研究人类认知性别差异的技术是有限的 通过将生物基质与环境和环境相分离的问题 社会因素。后一种因素的相对权重为 如果人类的认知性别差异通过以下方式证明 使用最初用在猴子身上的测试来显示性别 不同之处。此外，支持生物因素的论点 如果性别差异的方向在 这些测试中的猴子可以通过荷尔蒙调节来逆转。二 这类测试是客体反转和并发客体辨别。 在幼猴身上进行的实验表明，雄性猴子学会了前一项任务 比女性要早得多。相比之下，女婴 猴子学习后一项任务的时间比雄性要早得多。在两个服务器上 任务，性别差异的方向可以通过操纵来反转 围产期荷尔蒙和/或新生儿特定大脑部位的消融。 由于这两项任务除了认知需求之外都很相似，所以这 幼猴的双分离现象提供了强有力的证据 认知性别差异是由于不同的成熟率 受荷尔蒙影响的特定大脑区域。按顺序 为了确定这种行为模式是否也存在于人类中， 拟议的研究将测试正常的儿童和成年人这两个人 行为程序。儿童，年龄从12个月到36个月不等，以及 成人对照将在这两个任务中进行纵向测试，使用 测试程序被设计成与 可能是用在猴子身上的。这些一般程序一直是 以前对儿童有效。飞行员数据显示，年轻男性 事实上，孩子们比他们更早地掌握了一系列的物体反转 雌性，与之相反，年轻的雌性似乎掌握了同时 比男性更早的歧视。因为所有的性别差异都涉及 性别之间有一定程度的重叠，需要更多的科目 才能得出有统计学意义的结论。

Techniques used to study human gender differences in cognition are limited by the problem of separating biological substrates from environmental and social factors. The relative weightings of the latter factors would be reduced if cognitive gender differences in humans were demonstrated by using tests that were originally used with monkeys to show gender differences. Furthermore, the argument in favor of biological factors would be especially strong if the direction of the gender differences in monkeys on these tests could be reversed by hormonal manipulation. Two such tests are object reversal and concurrent object discriminations. Experiments in infant monkeys have shown that males learn the former task significantly earlier in life than do females. In contrast, infant female monkeys learn the latter task significantly earlier than do males. On both tasks, the direction of gender differences can be reversed by manipulation of perinatal hormones and/or neonatal ablations of specific brain sites. Since the two tasks are similar except in their cognitive demands, this double dissociation in infant monkeys provides strong evidence that some cognitive gender differences are due to differential maturational rates of specific brain areas which are under the influence of hormones. In order to determine whether this behavior pattern may also exist in humans, the proposed research will test normal children and adults with these two behavioral procedures. Children, ranging in age from 12 to 36 months, and adult controls will be tested longitudinally on the two tasks, using testing procedures which have been designed to resemble as closely as possible those used with monkeys. These general procedures have been effective previously with children. Pilot data indicate that young male children do, in fact, master a series of object reversals earlier than do females, and, in contrast, young females appear to master concurrent discriminations earlier than males. Because all gender differences involve some degree of overlap between the sexes, many more subjects are needed before statistically significant conclusions can be reached.