Sex differences in aptitude maturation during high school.

Abstract

In 1958 the United States Employment Service initiated a longitudinal maturation study to investigate the effects of maturation on General Aptitude Test Battery aptitude scores. The sample consisted of 20,541 students tested initially in lower high school grades (9, 10, and 11) and retested in Grade 12 and 6,167 students tested in Grade 12 when students in the lower high school grades were tested initially. The findings indicated that the average increases in aptitude scores attributable to practice and maturation were about the same for boys and girl6 and that the correlations between initial and retest scores (stability) were about the same for boys and girls.

Sex Differences in Mathematics Achievement–a Longitudinal Study

“…The absolute level and change in mathematics achievement observed here was fairly similar to that reported by Droege (1966) in a comparable study.…”

Sex Differences in Cognitive Functioning: Evidence, Determinants, Implications

“…However, in a review of over 30 studies with measures that appear to have a spatial component, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) did not find any distinct sex differences until adolescence. Fur thermore, Droege (1967), Flanegan et al (1961 and Hall (1978) found increases in boys' superior performance on spatial tasks through high school. While the spatial abilities of children of all ages have been studied extensively, most inves tigations of adults have been limited to a few studies.…”

“…In the age range from 6-11 years, there appear to be no consistent sex differences in verbal abilities, although after adolescence girls generally appear to outperform boys in tests of verbal skills (Gallagher, 1964;Droege, 1967;Eichhorn, 1973). Among adults between the ages of 16 and 64 years, women are known to obtain higher mean scores than men on the verbal ability subtests of the WAIS (Similarities and Vocabulary ;Wechsler, 1955).…”

Sex differences in clerical speed: Perceptual encoding vs. verbal encoding

“…In more recent stUdies, Droege (1967), using a sample of 20,000 adolescents from ages 14 to 16 years, found significant sex differences at all age levels on two speeded matching tasks. One task required subjects to compare names of firms for differences in style and spelling.…”