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Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

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Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#91

A single study with n=80, in a social psych journal, with a trendy soundbite conclusion? Of course it's not a false positive! The fact that the authors cite a paper by Jens Foerster is icing on the cake.

n=80 is actually not bad, if that's what you're implying. There are a lot of studies that are n=30 since that's the rule of thumb most follow.

The n isn't the bad part. I'm skeptical of all psych studies. Readers extrapolate too much from simple, controlled experiments.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#92
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean whatever their sex? Gender is such a strange term.

When investigating the intersection of unconscious attitudes (often shaped by culture) and performance, gender is more relevant than sex. It's not whether you have this equipment or that but what groups you are perceived to belong to and what groups you see yourself as belonging to. In some cultures there are third genders with different cultural expectations: the Hijra in India, Kathoey in Thailand, some other group…

Not really. Boys have about 14 to 17 times the amount of serum testosterone as girls and that does affect their felt incentives for things like competition. Culture can mute this but at great cost to boy's and men's health.

The idea that gender is separate from biological sex is very recent. When you examine its origin you find that it comes from Foucault and Judith Butler. Both were gay. It's unsurprising to me that that idea would come from that lineage. If you are gay you are confronted with a difference between what you feel and what society tells you from a very early age. In general straight people do not have that issue and would never consider drawing that distinction unless the concept is introduced to them.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#93
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sex is the biology; Gender is the identity That's only a very recent distinction, and still a contentious one. According to Merriam-Webster ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender ) and the OED ( http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/gend... ), it's far from clear.

Based on what the dictionary says? The idea that gender and sex mean two different things isn't contentious amongst the people who study the phenomenon academically.

Well, gender studies is not very scientific. It is more "theorizing", in the sense of writing obscurantist explanations for everyday phenomenon.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#94
This is completely anecdotal, but when I was back in the Middle East, tests essentially were games/competitions. Everyone knew everyone else's scores and they were often announced out loud as the results are handed back. Students who consistently get high scores are looked up to and respected. Your academic performance contributed significantly to your social standing in the classroom.

Then I came to Canada and this notion was completely absent. It was one of the many culture shocks. Your grades don't seem to matter that much.

The fact that in the media, at least American disney shows, "nerd" is used a pejorative against people who do well academically, was completely puzzling to me (and actually it still is).

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#95
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of being patronizing, you're probably being downvoted by parents who figure you don't have kids. We have spent many years trying to present gender-neutral environments to our children. Yet at age 3 my son completely ignored the giraffe we were trying to point out at the zoo, and would only focus on the irrigation pump. That kind of experience was repeated often with him and my daughters. One daughter would on…

You are being patronizing, though. Cordelia Fine, who does psychological research on this, has a great anecdote about this entire line of argument- the nonsexist parent who tried to do gender neutral parenting, comically failed, and then realized boys and girls truly are different, and now campaigns from the opposite perspective. She brings up one such anecdote from another book, where parents really tried to give th…

>> Of course, the mom was the one tucking the girl to bed almost every night.

So why did the daughter, given fire trucks and dolls, tuck in the fire trucks instead of the dolls?

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#96
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what the dictionary says? The idea that gender and sex mean two different things isn't contentious amongst the people who study the phenomenon academically.

Well, gender studies is not very scientific. It is more "theorizing", in the sense of writing obscurantist explanations for everyday phenomenon.

Do you feel the same way about all social sciences? Does "materialism" only mean valuing material things to you or do you respect the Philosophical definition? Honestly it's a lot of handwaving to excuse ignorance (what not knowing the difference between the two terms is)

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#98
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When investigating the intersection of unconscious attitudes (often shaped by culture) and performance, gender is more relevant than sex. It's not whether you have this equipment or that but what groups you are perceived to belong to and what groups you see yourself as belonging to. In some cultures there are third genders with different cultural expectations: the Hijra in India, Kathoey in Thailand, some other group…

Not really. Boys have about 14 to 17 times the amount of serum testosterone as girls and that does affect their felt incentives for things like competition. Culture can mute this but at great cost to boy's and men's health. The idea that gender is separate from biological sex is very recent. When you examine its origin you find that it comes from Foucault and Judith Butler. Both were gay. It's unsurprising to me that…

Isn't caitlin Jenner straight?

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#99
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex is the biology; Gender is the identity. Discrimations are based on gender, not sex. Women are told to wear pink dresses because of how our society see women (female gender), not because they have a vagina (female sex).

Regardless, these factors are in a 1-to-1 relationship for around 99% of schoolchildren in the third grade "aged 9 years old on average" including, presumably, every single child studied in this study. Discussion of the specific differences, or of the other cases, might have substantial merit... but seem less than productive on this particular occasion as the topic is at best only tangentially related.

Sure; I was only explaining the difference to OP who seems to think gender and sex are two words for the same thing.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#100

A single study with n=80, in a social psych journal, with a trendy soundbite conclusion? Of course it's not a false positive! The fact that the authors cite a paper by Jens Foerster is icing on the cake.

I guess you think science would be better off just memory-holing results that you don't want to know about, is that right?
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