Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!deimos!uxc!tank!nic.MR.NET!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!munnari!murdu.oz.au!sue@uunet.UU.NET From: munnari!murdu.oz.au!sue@uunet.UU.NET (Sue McPherson) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Logic and Language, taking sides, female inanimate objects, naming Message-ID: <5924@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 1 Dec 88 22:56:02 GMT References: <5688@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <5715@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <8676@spl1.UUCP> <5916@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu Organization: Software Contracts Group, University of Melbourne, Australia Lines: 48 Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu In article <5916@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> mcvax!hslrswi!naz@uunet.UU.NET (Norman H. Azadian) writes: >In article <8676@spl1.UUCP> djk@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Doris J. Karlson) writes: >>These findings suggest that it is not the case that women are "alien >>to the world of logic", but that women can express both logical and >>non-logical ideas. (Non-logical does not imply illogical.) And men >>are less capable of expressing non-logical ideas. ^^^ >^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > >My theory is that good spatial perception is a relatively good indicater of a >talent for such things as problem solving, computer programming, architecture, >and mathematics. Since spatial perception is associated with the non-logical >side of the brain, then biology should favor women in these professions. Enough of theories, here is some info on a study done on the subject! Some years ago (1978 ?) I was part of study which looked at sex differences in problem solving, spacial perception and IQ. The study (done by Monash Uni) used several groups, boys & girls from a co-ed high school, as well as boys and girls from single sex schools which were academically oriented. The main reason for this was to try to get a group of girls who's performance would not be affected by "girls can't do maths" attitudes or biased teaching methods. About six months after we did the tests, they came back and gave us a summary of their results which were (very generally speaking); - In overall IQ there were more boys at the top end of the scale, but there were also more boys at the bottom end. There were more girls closer to the average which was about the same for both boys and girls. - That boys tended to be better at spacial problems, while girls were better at the grammer problems (ie. This is a grammer rule, apply it to the following sentences). They interpreted these results to mean that boys were more intuitive and girls where more logical!! One example they gave was in solving a maths problem, boys were more likely to skip a few steps in working out the answer and then go back and fill them in while girls were more likely to start at the beginning and work methodically through to the solution. Of course they finished with a disclaimer that there were lots of exceptions to these rules. If anyone is really interested I could try and find out where they published their results. Sue McPherson sue@murdu.mu.oz