Gender differences in cognitive development

Abstract

The potential effect of gender on intellectual abilities remains controversial. The purpose of this research was to analyze gender differences in cognitive test performance among children from continuous age groups. For this purpose, the normative data from 7 domains of the newly developed neuropsychological test battery, the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil [Child Neuropsychological Assessment] (Matute, Rosselli, Ardila, & Ostrosky-Solis, 2007), were analyzed. The sample included 788 monolingual children (350 boys, 438 girls) ages 5 to 16 years from Mexico and Colombia. Gender differences were observed in oral language (language expression and language comprehension), spatial abilities (recognition of pictures seen from different angles), and visual (Object Integration Test) and tactile perceptual tasks, with boys outperforming girls in most cases, except for the tactile tasks. Gender accounted for only a very small percentage of the variance (1%-3%). Gender x Age interactions were observed for the tactile tasks only. It was concluded that gender differences during cognitive development are minimal, appear in only a small number of tests, and account for only a low percentage of the score variance.