Wonderings about brains and being good at things.

I wonder if many really good physicists, applied mathematicians and computer wizzes are just touching the AS spectrum.

LOL oh yes, that's why there is a problem with Silicon Valley with rates of Autism increasing.

I wonder if many really good physicists, applied mathematicians and computer wizzes are just touching the AS spectrum.

DH has an ability to become totally obsessed with a subject and very quickly learn vast numbers of facts about it.

He doesn't seem to need mental down time, he rarely watches films and frequently wanders back to the study, refuses to watch much other TV at all except science Progs.

Reads way way more non fiction than fiction. Doesn't seek out friends. Although he's a very loyal and helpful one.

Simply doesn't get distracted like a normal human being.

He is also very cleaver, he can combine rearrange and use all this stuff, in a way an autistic person could not.

I've met other men who are similar, but never a woman for certain, one of his collages wives I suspect gets close.

Maybe there are more male techies because the obsessive brains occur slightly more often in males.

Saying that, I am also into more "girly" pursuits such as sewing, cooking etc. perhaps because I don't allow my gender to influence what I "should" be interested in.

Haven't read whole thread, but always loved physics as it was very easy and not very labour intensive I.e no essay writing etc. basically I am lazy. Infer what you will about what that says about men/boys (joking!). But in all seriousness, I have always preferred more formulaic, logical subjects. That's the way MY brain works. The fact that I also happen to be female is irrelevant.

That's interesting. I do mean to read the Fine book sometime soon.

Fast - you might find Cordelia Fine's book interesting. She talks about the weaknesses of hormonal arguments IIRC.

I don't argue that it's all social FWIW, I argue that we can't know because we have never raised a child without the social.

I recently read Baron-Cohen's book and thought it was a pretty crap book. But I say that as one who basically agrees with his approach and acknowledges the emerging science behind it - I just think he did a really bad job of describing it, and devoted far to much of it to cliche and speculation, weakening his credibility.

But the question that always occurs to me is: why would there NOT be differences between the nature of male and female intelligence and what they're most likely to be interested in and good at?

For a start, it's well know that these things are influenced by hormones, and the hormonal make-up of men and women is different. The influence of testosterone on all kinds of mental and emotional factors is well documented, including several references in B-C's book to traits of infant girls with unusually high testosterone levels. Women and men also have different organs, and these organs affect their psychology. No-one can deny that the menstrual cycle, or menopause, for example, affects psychology. So if you have half of humanity subject to a whole different set of physical factors than the other half, of course it will have mental effects.

Furthermore, strong differences of behaviour and functioning within the social group, between males and females, are clear in studies of all kinds of other animals that aren't subject to cultural conditioning. Why would we assume that humans are different? It seems to me those who assume male and female mental and emotional functioning would be the same if it weren't for conditioning, are making as much of an assumption as anyone else. We are comparing things that are different, so there's no more basis for assuming that the level of "innate" difference between them would be 0, than any other number.

As for IQ, the current thinking seems to be that average scores between the genders are about the same - sometimes males score slightly higher, but hardly significantly. However the distribution among males seems to be wider. ie there are more males geniuses and more male idiots (to the extent that such things can be measured by IQ tests anyway, which is debateable).

But the most important thing with all these things is that they're about averages. They don't negate the fact of a full range of intelligence or personality types being found among all genders, races or anything else. Or the rightness of treating people equally and without prejudice so that they can best express their own personal nature.

I don't think single sex schools are a good idea at all from a social development point of view. I went to a Catholic girl's school in Ireland and grew up thinking that boys were from another planet, an idea that was reinforced by all the adults around me too. I remember going to university and being a bit giddy at the thought that I was allowed to talk to boys and sit next to them in class and stuff - I didn't really know how to react to be honest. I would say it took until my late 20s until I was actually comfortable working alongside men and chatting with them just as I would a woman. I still feel more comfortable around women.

Some people think that having a sibling of the opposite sex means you're quite clued up and comfortable being around other members of the opposite sex, but I don't think that works IME. My brother was not 'a boy', he was just my brother - I didn't fancy him for a start (!), and he had always been there and we had our own, not always very pleasant, way of interacting with each other. It was totally different to meeting boys/men socially or at work and having to build a relationship from scratch. And totally different again from meeting a boy/man who you fancied - that really was a minefield!

The problem is, I think, that social psychology falls between two stools - the biological sciences and sociology.

About - the issue of experimental confounds and fitting method to question applies to biological sciences too though. I agree that it's an issue but I don't agree it's unique to social psych. Plenty of neuropsychology is guilty of over-extrapolating (and being phenomenological in my opinion!). Zoology has issues of wild/free populations and 'proto-cultural' variation. I suppose my main point is that you can't look at research which focuses on social factors vs research that focuses on biological factors and assume that the latter is 'better'.

I agree there's some really interesting qual work out there (Potter/Reicher in particular for me) but I know very few people who mix qual and quant. It's what we used to teach at the OU but it's rubbish. Most people in Psychology in the UK at least use quantitative approaches. A minority use qualitative methods, and of those, some mix in numerical stuff too. But I think that's a distraction from the issue really, as gender research in Psychology is heavily quantitative. Can't speak for Sociology of course...!

LeggyBlondeNE I went to a single sex boarding school, and I got very good at sports, excellent at sciences, and completely crap with women until my 20s.

I suspect had it not been a boarding school, my science would still have been excellent, sports rubbish but better with women.

Separate classes for girls sounds rubbish, tbh; bit ghetto-ising.

Experimental social psychology does exist but is open to much criticism - in main that it's values are too Wesrern white make, based on a model of z human being as a rational information processor with inputs and outputs. The fact is that the kind of experimental results you get, depend on the questions you aka and then how you interpret that data.

I was very cynical about phenomenology, critical social psychology and social psychoanalytic theory but when I studied it, I found that it had do much to offer science of social psychology.

I think the work being done usjng qualitative measures is significant, Potter and Wetherell etc, not only in social psych but also in child development.

Also - I was taught to use the methodology which fits the question you are asking, surely many researchers use quantitative and qualitative data?

OneMoreChap/YoullLaugh

The data on schools is that single sex schools are better than mixed for girls' achievement but worse for boys.

But there are social consequences to single sex schools for those who don't get regular interaction with the opposite sex outside school (case in point, my DH, who treated girls as another species until well into his 20s! But I've known plenty more like him, male and female.)

The separate classes for some lessons, if the school is big enough, is supposed to help I think, but it's about a decade since I read anything about it. Only problem is that at my school, unless there were two small classes, I'd have been even more bored and frustrated in a girls-only but more mixed class, and ditto for the boys who were best at maths and science.

BBB - "I say social psychology isn't as accurate because it isn't meant to be as accurate! Social psychologists aren't as interested in the the 'how' and 'what' but the 'why'. They don't attempt to control all the variables because there are too many of them to control so they work with the qualitatitve not the quantitative."

I'm guessing you're not too familiar with experimental social psychology?! For what it's worth I would actually critique social psychology in the past (and sometimes in the present) as being too phenomenological, too focused on the 'what' and not on the 'why'. But most Social Psych these days uses the experimental method and can control for extraneous unknowns just as well as biological approaches (and in biology there's also myriad complexities and unknowns and that's why we all use randomisation and control samples in experiments).

Which is not to say the qual people don't exist, but that's not who Fine was citing.

I am really torn about single sex education.

Single sex schools I am fine with.

But single sex lessons for just some subjects.... Well I worry that any positive impact is outweighed by the message of "oooh, girls are a bit poor at X, so we need to put you in a special class". Definitely as a teenage girl I would have seen it as a negative message about girls if I was told I had to be in the girls maths/physics/chemistry lesson. Does anyone know of any studies on that?

Best reason I can think of for separate education.

I suspect both boys and girls would do better educated apart.
I wonder if the uptake and performance in science is better in all-girl schools?

[It is, I gather]

Yes, I think you're right, then, upper. Male physicists are well known; women are not. Didn't someone on here say the other day that their DD's class was shown a picture of Curie in her lab, asked what they thought she was doing, and they thought she was cooking?

I agree that it's likely reasonably educated teenagers/adults won't buy 'men are innately bad at physics' in the way a woman might, if they're convinced by examples from history.

But then, what about small children? How early does it all set in? I think another set of assumptions are at play already when children are very little.

"Why would you assume that a social psychological approach was not as accurate as a scientific one? Especially when you consider that science isn't entirely objective in practice".

No of course, none of the life sciences and particularly psychology are objective in practice. We aren't talking about studies on rocks but on living things which aren't all identical and particularly when you are studying people there are difficulties in controlling all the variables. That doesn't of course mean that you can't try - it depends on what you are trying to look at.

I say social psychology isn't as accurate because it isn't meant to be as accurate! Social psychologists aren't as interested in the the 'how' and 'what' but the 'why'. They don't attempt to control all the variables because there are too many of them to control so they work with the qualitatitve not the quantitative. That is entirely fine - it has it's uses but that is working along side the scientifc not instead of it. You don't do what Fine did and rubbish a more scientific approach and replace it with a political view on gender differences. That doesn't prove anything. She tried to rubbish B-C's studies on the basis of methodology, and yet didn't apply the same standards to her own work.

Quite apart from anything else, I don't trust anybody on the extremes who decides that only nuture or only nature are relevant and that appears to be where Fine is coming from. It smacks of having an agenda and weakens her argument. The same would be true if a scientist, especially a male one, came and said that sex differences were all down to nature. Of the two of the B-C was more than happy to acknowledge both nature and nuture are relevant but not Fine.

kim147
"Do you know your history about women in science?"

messyisthenewtidy
"FFS, do you actually know anything about women's history?!"

Please, stop foaming at the mouth, take some sedatives if necessary, and accept the simple fact that there are many more famous historical male role models in science than there are female. Telling a class of boys that boys are shit at physics isn't going to wash when the subject is dominanted by men, past and present. That is all I was suggesting. I'm well aware of the social factors that contributed to this situation, but I'm not going to prefix every valid statement with a grovelling apology for the social conditions of centuries past.

LRDtheFeministDragon
"I don't understand what 'historical backlog of "genius"' means?"

A scientist who at least made an exceptional contribution to their field, or, more appropriately perhaps, created or fundmentally changed their field of science. Einstein, Dirac, Newton, Pauling, Hodgkin, Curie, Watson, Crick and so on. Whether or not you'd class them as genius is a personal matter, hence my use of inverted commas.

messyisthenewtidy
"And as for your cream of the crop theory, purlease! I work in STEM, and believe me it has less to do with genius and more to do with confidence, personal interest and a love of spurting out confusing acronyms! !"

Yes, I'm sure the average IQ of CERN physicists is no higher than that of the team of career Johhny and Jane no-stars at my local McDonalds.

Did you ever work in a McDonald's?

I think the differences largely lie in nature. The fundamental problem lies in the way the differences are valued. Why is there never an outcry at the lack of men in the arts, the care industry, or number of boys studying beauty therapy? Where is the initiative to get boys interested haidressing?

Surely sewing is only a girl thing because all of these frustrated geniuses had to fill their time somehow, plus someone had to fix up the shirts and make clothes.

I read somewhere that the first women to be accepted into Oxford were not permitted to pass out. So they could study to the same level but they could not be rewarded for it, they were locked away from the men. I wonder why? maybe all that education might have corrupted them!

Allpast, quite. I know a Maths whizz who loves nothing more than reading a good knitting pattern.

Well mathematical brains are supposed to be good at music and also sewing. Yet maths is seen as a "boy" thing and sewing as a "girl" thing. Not sure about music!

And as for your cream of the crop theory, purlease! I work in STEM, and believe me it has less to do with genius and more to do with confidence, personal interest and a love of spurting out confusing acronyms! !