Subject: Re: Gender and Cognitive Style Date sent: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 16:57:45 +1100 From: Timothy Bates <tbates@bunyip.bhs.mq.edu.au> To: "Extropians" <extropians@extropy.com> Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> Hi all
> Mikey said
> >I would say that since women have a dominant right brain, while men are
> >dominant left,
>
> Patrick wrote
> >How do you come at this? I wasn't aware there was any good evidence
> >differences in lateralization between men and women that contributed to
> >cognitive style. [Any references?]
>
> Dozens. Apart from very well documented differences in language area size
> (a researcher at UNSW is doing some of this with post mortem cell counts:
> the differences are substantial) and other tasks such as spatial judgment
> (see for a review), recently Goldberg been developing an approach that
> focuses on preferred style rather than ability using a cognitive
> preference task that I find interesting. I append the abstract below.
>
> One reason that there is less on this than one might expect is that
> interest in this topic tends to generate the response that Damien was
> driven to emit, i.e.:
>
> >What? *What????* WHAAAAH
>
> Not conducive to getting grants or publishing work.
>
> Anyhow, there is tons. From a neuropsych perspective, go to
> <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/medline.html>
> and enter this search or similar
> ((spatial[All Fields] AND (sex[All Fields] OR gender[All Fields])) AND
> difference[All Fields])
>
> For fun add the term "laterality" to pick up neuroscience references.
>
>
> Here is Goldberg's paper:
>
> Podell K, Lovell M, Zimmerman M, Goldberg E (1995) The Cognitive Bias
> Task and lateralized frontal lobe functions in males. J Neuropsychiatry
> Clin Neurosci 1995 Fall;7(4):491-501
>
> The Cognitive Bias Task (CBT) is a multiple-choice response selection
> paradigm characterized by inherent ambiguity. All items offer a range
> from extremely context-dependent to extremely context-invariant
> responses. Lateralized prefrontal lesions produce extreme, and opposite,
> response biases on CBT in right-handed males. Healthy control subjects
> perform in the middle range. Findings suggest a dynamic balance between
> two synergistic decision-making systems in the frontal lobes:
> context-dependent in the left hemisphere and context-invariant in the
> right. The robust lateralized effects, which are dependent on task
> ambiguity, are sensitive and specific to frontal dysfunction. CBT is
> discussed in comparison with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test as a
> potential cognitive activation task for functional neuroimaging of the
> frontal lobes.
>
>
And that's not all. Not only is it verboten to acknowledge, if I may
take Anders at his word, it also severely restricts the level at which
uploading may be (gender neutrally) engineered. Joe
>
>
> ____________________
> Dr. Timothy Bates Don't compromise. Use QuickTime.
> Dept Psychology <http://www.apple.com/quicktime/>
> Macquarie University <http://www.QuickTimeFAQ.org/>
> Sydney NSW 2109 Australia
> tbates@bunyip.bhs.mq.edu.au
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