a question from my brother

[Dale, Philip S.]

Depending on your interpretation of the phrase "brain function," this statement is almost trivially true. For virtually every language and cognitive measure (and I suspect socio-emotional measure as well, though I'm not as familiar with that domain), gender differences are relatively tiny compared to within-gender variation, typically not accounting for more than 5% of the variance. On the other hand, if you mean *direct* measures of brain function, e.g., glucose uptake, areas activated during specific cognitive functions, that's another matter, and I leave to the experts. But I'd be mighty surprised if the same conclusion didn't emerge there.
Note also that the relatively few behavioural genetic studies which have addressed the question generally show that the same genes affect performance in males and females.
Philip Dale


-----Original Message-----
From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith
Sent: Thu 10/21/2004 06:34
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: a question from my brother
 
>  just a quick point: do you know of a good reference to support within
>  gender differences in brain function and behaviour as being greater than
>  between gender diffs?

can anyone help?  Is the statement true?
Annette


-- 
________________________________________________________________
Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, CBE, FBA, FMedSci, MAE, C.Psychol.
Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
Institute of Child Health,
30 Guilford Street,
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