Gender and Its Relation to Cognitive Processes

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Main body
References

Introduction

Cognitive issues speak of factors such as intelligence quotient, memory, problem solving, reasoning, mental arithmetic and other such issues. There is an argument that gender influences the IQ of a person and that men have more intelligence than women. This issue has raised considerable debate with supporters and detractors both arguing their line of view. This paper examines the issue of gender and how it is related to cognitive processes.

Main body

There were arguments that men have more brain mass and so they are more intelligent and the fact is true that while men’s brains are about 1 kilogram more heavier than women. To test this argument Haier (2004) conducted brain-scanning tests on volunteers to find out if grey matter content in the brain had any influence on the cognitive skills of men and women. The researchers used to sets of volunteers, 23 people from University of Mexico with 14 women and 9 men and 24 volunteers from university of California with 13 men and 11 women. General intelligence ability for the people was tested using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to ascertain the non verbal and verbal mental abilities.

WAIS Full Scale IQ score was found out for each subject and then each was subjected to a full MRI scanning. The volume and depth of grey and white matter in the brain were mapped for each volunteer in about 50 locations and the percentage of grey matter and white matter was calculated. The study concluded that intelligence had no relation to the gender of the subjects. Differences in the volumes of grey and white matter in smaller number of areas that are distributed in the brain are the main reason for variation in intelligence. The results also showed why structural differences in grey and white matter volumes in specific regions define why people with the same IQ have different cognitive weakness and strengths.

Colom (2002) performed a test on 703 women and 666 males to find out if the gender has any difference in the IQ and cognitive ability of people. The author subjected the volunteers to 14 tests based on the WAIS-III sub tests. The tests that were performed were: vocabulary, similarities, arithmetic, digit span, information, comprehension, letter number, picture completion, coding, block design, matrices, picture arrangement, symbol search and object assembly. Based on the analysis of the g loading it was concluded that there was nothing of statistical significance that showed that men are more intelligent than women. The only reason for the variation could be attributed to group factors and test specificity and that the scores as seen in the test showed negligible difference.

The two journal articles have researched the contribution of gender to the cognitive abilities of people and the influence it has on the intelligence. The study by Haier (2004) examined the relation between brain size, proportion of grey and white matter on intelligence. The study used MRI scan on 47 volunteers from different locations and the study showed that while cognitive abilities are influenced by the proportion of grey matter, there is no relation to the mass of the brain and the gender of the volunteer. The second study by Colom (2002) conducted on 703 women and 666 males to find out if the gender has any difference in the IQ and cognitive ability of people. The author concluded that there was no basis on which IQ could be related to the gender. The paper thus concludes that gender has no impact on the cognitive abilities of a person.

References

Colom. Roberto, 2002. Null Sex Differences in General Intelligence: Evidence from the WAIS-III. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 5(1), pp. 29-35.

Haier. Richard J., Jung. Rex, 2004. Structural brain variation and general intelligence. NeuroImage, 23, pp. 425–433.

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Gender and Its Relation to Cognitive Processes

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