Psychological mindedness and abstract reasoning in late childhood and adolescence: An exploration using new instruments

Hatcher, Robert L.; Hatcher, Sherry Lynn; Berlin, Meryl; Okla, Katherine; Richards, Jill

doi:10.1007/bf01537075

Cited by 40 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Such results support Hatcher et al's (1990) findings that girls scored higher than boys on social understanding tasks across grades four through twelve. Furthermore, as compared to boys, girls were rated as more socially-skilled and popular or likable by their peers.…”

Section: Gender Differencessupporting

confidence: 90%

Theory of Mind in Preadolescence: Relations Between Social Understanding and Social Competence

1999

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Theory of mind (ToM) underlies the ability to attribute mental states to people as a way of understanding their social behaviour. Although ToM development is an active area of research, most empirical investigations focus on infants and young children. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to assess ToM in preadolescents and to determine whether individual differences in this mentalizing ability relate to social competence and relate differently for girls and for boys. It was hypothesized that preadolescents' ability to understand thoughts and emotions in others would be associated with their social competence. 128 preadolescents (64 girls; 64 boys; mean age 11-9) completed peer social competence ratings, a vocabulary task, and participated in a social understanding (ToM) interview. Teacher ratings of the participants' social competence were also collected. Based on composite ToM scores, results indicated positive associations between ToM and (a) peer ratings of social-interaction skills, (b) general vocabulary ability. Separate gender analyses revealed significant effects. Results are discussed in relation to (1) individual differences in social understanding and social competence and (2) effects of socio-cultural context.

show abstract

Section: Gender Differencessupporting

confidence: 90%

Theory of Mind in Preadolescence: Relations Between Social Understanding and Social Competence

1999

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It must be noted that both male and female children appear more empathetic toward same-sex individuals (i.e., males more empathetic to males, and females more empathetic to females; Feshbach and Roe, 1968). In 10- to 13-year-old children, females appear to be better than males at understanding feelings and intentions of story characters (Bosacki and Wilde Astington, 1999), a finding that is consistent with similar findings in late adolescence (age 9 to 17 years; Hatcher et al, 1990). Female children, age 7 to 11 years, are also more likely than male children to recognize faux pas, such as when a speaker says something without a consideration of the listener (e.g., socially awkward or tactless), resulting in negative social consequences (Baron-Cohen et al, 1999).…”

Section: Sex Differences In the Development Of Empathy In Humanssupporting

confidence: 78%

Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior

Christov-Moore

Simpson

Coudé

et al. 2014

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

748

479

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Evidence suggests that there are differences in the capacity for empathy between males and females. However, how deep do these differences go? Stereotypically, females are portrayed as more nurturing and empathetic, while males are portrayed as less emotional and more cognitive. Some authors suggest that observed gender differences might be largely due to cultural expectations about gender roles. However, empathy has both evolutionary and developmental precursors, and can be studied using implicit measures, aspects that can help elucidate the respective roles of culture and biology. This article reviews evidence from ethology, social psychology, economics, and neuroscience to show that there are fundamental differences in implicit measures of empathy, with parallels in development and evolution. Studies in nonhuman animals and younger human populations (infants/children) offer converging evidence that sex differences in empathy have phylogenetic and ontogenetic roots in biology and are not merely cultural byproducts driven by socialization. We review how these differences may have arisen in response to males’ and females’ different roles throughout evolution. Examinations of the neurobiological underpinnings of empathy reveal important quantitative gender differences in the basic networks involved in affective and cognitive forms of empathy, as well as a qualitative divergence between the sexes in how emotional information is integrated to support decision making processes. Finally, the study of gender differences in empathy can be improved by designing studies with greater statistical power and considering variables implicit in gender (e.g., sexual preference, prenatal hormone exposure). These improvements may also help uncover the nature of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in which one sex is more vulnerable to compromised social competence associated with impaired empathy.

show abstract

“…Whereas sex differences in mathematics may be related to the male advantage in spatial abilities [4], girls advantage in reading (and writing) may be related to an early advantage in many language-related competencies that facilitate learning to read (for a review see pp.119–122 of [11]). Further, reading comprehension might also require more complex underlying social-cognitive processes for which girls also have an advantage [10](p.413), such as perspective taking, “theory of mind”, and social understanding [33]–[34]. Given that the sex differences in reading-related skills are evident from a young age, it is likely to have an accumulative negative effect on boys’ reading development, and in that context, intervention should focus on young boys.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Differences in Mathematics and Reading Achievement Are Inversely Related: Within- and Across-Nation Assessment of 10 Years of PISA Data

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We analyzed one decade of data collected by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), including the mathematics and reading performance of nearly 1.5 million 15 year olds in 75 countries. Across nations, boys scored higher than girls in mathematics, but lower than girls in reading. The sex difference in reading was three times as large as in mathematics. There was considerable variation in the extent of the sex differences between nations. There are countries without a sex difference in mathematics performance, and in some countries girls scored higher than boys. Boys scored lower in reading in all nations in all four PISA assessments (2000, 2003, 2006, 2009). Contrary to several previous studies, we found no evidence that the sex differences were related to nations’ gender equality indicators. Further, paradoxically, sex differences in mathematics were consistently and strongly inversely correlated with sex differences in reading: Countries with a smaller sex difference in mathematics had a larger sex difference in reading and vice versa. We demonstrate that this was not merely a between-nation, but also a within-nation effect. This effect is related to relative changes in these sex differences across the performance continuum: We did not find a sex difference in mathematics among the lowest performing students, but this is where the sex difference in reading was largest. In contrast, the sex difference in mathematics was largest among the higher performing students, and this is where the sex difference in reading was smallest. The implication is that if policy makers decide that changes in these sex differences are desired, different approaches will be needed to achieve this for reading and mathematics. Interventions that focus on high-achieving girls in mathematics and on low achieving boys in reading are likely to yield the strongest educational benefits.

show abstract

Psychological mindedness and abstract reasoning in late childhood and adolescence: An exploration using new instruments

Cited by 40 publications

References 29 publications

Theory of Mind in Preadolescence: Relations Between Social Understanding and Social Competence

Theory of Mind in Preadolescence: Relations Between Social Understanding and Social Competence

Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior

Sex Differences in Mathematics and Reading Achievement Are Inversely Related: Within- and Across-Nation Assessment of 10 Years of PISA Data

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About