Sex Differences as a Statistical Variable

Abstract

Gender differences are often seen as either biologically determined or culturally acquired or conditioned. However, in an age where gender equality is the main target, neither peer reviewers nor students show much interest in gender differences. Moreover, not only do people try to integrate their 'ying' and 'yang' in their personalities also transgender identities are publicly acknowledged, appreciated and respected. Thus, in this chapter, I argue that we need to downgrade gender differences to a statistical variable that explains variance, sharpens statistical effects and reveals strategies. I am giving examples from my developmental psychology research where the split-sample analysis by gender showed amazing and often unexpected effects.

What Does the DAP:IQ Measure?: Drawing Comparisons between Drawing Performance and Developmental Assessments

“…We believe that [32]'s "prematurity" effect is instead an age effect. [32]'s findings also suffer from omitting sex as a predictor, despite finding significant sex differences in a separate analysis, and despite known sex differences in drawing ability for young children (see [18]). We found no positive relationship between cognitive development or gross motor skills and DAP performance, while [32].…”

Fine motor skills and motor control networking in developmental age

“…Fine motor skills seemed to be already networked in girls at the beginning of school but became linked and generalized in boys in the second year supported the view that sex differences; this result should be considered to understand performance strategies and underlying motor, cognitive, and neuronal patterns. This showed how a task can be solved by the two genders with different strategies and may shed new understanding on development of competence (Lange‐Küttner, 2017).…”

Clock Walking and Gender: How Circular Movements Influence Arithmetic Calculations

“…Separate analyses by levels of gender (for a support on the split-sample analysis by gender, see Lange-Küttner, 2017 ) showed that the type of operation X direction of the movement was significant for male participants [ F (1,22) = 5.306, MSE = 0.832, p = 0.031, = 0.194], but not for the female ones [ F (1,22) = 0.504, MSE = 0.973, p = 0.485, = 0.022]. More specifically, as regard male participants, the interaction was nearly significant in the active mode modality condition [ F (1,22) = 4, MSE = 1.767, p = 0.058, = 0.154], and not significant in the passive mode condition [ F (1,22) = 0.084, MSE = 1.166, p = 0.775, = 0.004].…”