the feminits have a propensity to chatter but this is not language skill as the content is mostly subjective and zeroed on herself - yap yap yap

Harry potter is the sort of spaced out phantasy wimyn excel at and they can't get enough romance novels

how many scientific works have wimyn published

This is complete nonsense.

Psychology professor Christine Chiarello said that in none of their language tests were women better than men. The brains of men in the study were found to be 13 percent larger than the women. Although there were significant individual differences in brain organization, the results suggest that brain size matters more than gender.

The language tests showed no difference. I have argued that from experience for 20 years. So what has brain-size to do with it? The inference that could be drawn is that men need 13% more brain volume to match women in language. Daft. How about looking at shoe size. Bigger feet are needed to speak well?

Is it the reporting that is stupid, or the professor?

Quote from Percy

This is complete nonsense.

Psychology professor Christine Chiarello said that in none of their language tests were women better than men. The brains of men in the study were found to be 13 percent larger than the women. Although there were significant individual differences in brain organization, the results suggest that brain size matters more than gender.

The language tests showed no difference. I have argued that from experience for 20 years. So what has brain-size to do with it? The inference that could be drawn is that men need 13% more brain volume to match women in language. Daft. How about looking at shoe size. Bigger feet are needed to speak well?

Is it the reporting that is stupid, or the professor?

Or both. Why do "significant" individual differences in brain organization
not matter as much?

well, I would say that ayn rand was an intellectual heavyweight

Quote from Aug9th-LiveOrDie

well, I would say that ayn rand was an intellectual heavyweight

Ayn Rand speeches were so long winded,the one were the chap defended himself in court after blowing up the social housing,i am sure the jury found him not guilty just to shut him up.

Quote from Percy

This is complete nonsense.

Psychology professor Christine Chiarello said that in none of their language tests were women better than men. The brains of men in the study were found to be 13 percent larger than the women. Although there were significant individual differences in brain organization, the results suggest that brain size matters more than gender.

The language tests showed no difference. I have argued that from experience for 20 years. So what has brain-size to do with it? The inference that could be drawn is that men need 13% more brain volume to match women in language. Daft. How about looking at shoe size. Bigger feet are needed to speak well?

Is it the reporting that is stupid, or the professor?

I'm just wondering....

The story, as it is authored on the original, quoted site, seems to IMPLY that men did better on the tests, whatever those tests were. I think the average person who heard, "Not once did women do better than men" would assume that in the vast majority of instances, men had done better than women.

Yet, you seem adamant that, in essence, what the reporter reports as "in none of the language tests did women exceed men" means "men and women pretty much performed equally."

While logically, I suppose the vocabulary and structure of the reporter allows your conclusion, I don't think most people would come to it. Do you have some inside information about this particular round of studies?

I just know that we women tend to talk more and be more social.

Interestingly enough, though, I am interested in languages...how they evolved, similarities, that kind of thing. I had French AND Spanish in school--voluntarily.

Quote from contraeverything

I'm just wondering....

The story, as it is authored on the original, quoted site, seems to IMPLY that men did better on the tests, whatever those tests were. I think the average person who heard, "Not once did women do better than men" would assume that in the vast majority of instances, men had done better than women.

Yet, you seem adamant that, in essence, what the reporter reports as "in none of the language tests did women exceed men" means "men and women pretty much performed equally."

While logically, I suppose the vocabulary and structure of the reporter allows your conclusion, I don't think most people would come to it. Do you have some inside information about this particular round of studies?

______________________________________________

Unfortunately I do not. I agree with you about the implication that men did better. My reason for selecting this article was the constant repetition I have heard and read about womens' innate advantage over men in this area. It was considered gospel truth, and that's why I used bold print in my post. Men may indeed have done better, but I think it was not anticipated they would.

Quote from Alexandra

I just know that we women tend to talk more and be more social.

Interestingly enough, though, I am interested in languages...how they evolved, similarities, that kind of thing. I had French AND Spanish in school--voluntarily.

_________________________________________________

Scientifically, your findings need to be repeated by other researchers ... the more they do, the better. If this study is a successful repeat of others, it's important.

Quote from contraeverything

I'm just wondering....

The story, as it is authored on the original, quoted site, seems to IMPLY that men did better on the tests, whatever those tests were. I think the average person who heard, "Not once did women do better than men" would assume that in the vast majority of instances, men had done better than women.

Yet, you seem adamant that, in essence, what the reporter reports as "in none of the language tests did women exceed men" means "men and women pretty much performed equally."

While logically, I suppose the vocabulary and structure of the reporter allows your conclusion, I don't think most people would come to it. Do you have some inside information about this particular round of studies?

Further information.....

http://newsroom.ucr.edu/news_item.ht...n=page&id=1872

Christine Chiarello
RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Findings of a three-year study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside and the University of Florida, Gainesville run counter to the popular belief that women have better language skills than men.

In a study of 200 university students, the researchers found that women and men performed similarly on tests of language and reading skills. Differences in brain organization between men and women may be driven by sex differences in brain size, they said.

"People have said women have relatively larger language areas of the brain," said Christine Chiarello, UCR professor of psychology. "In none of our language tasks were women better than men. When you account for differences in brain size between men and women there are few differences in the relative size of areas. While there are differences between men and women, those differences are minimal compared to the wide range of individual differences in both sexes."

The study, "Size Matters: Cerebral Volume Influences Sex Differences in Neuroanatomy," was published recently in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

The researchers gathered demographic data, tested language and reading skills, and performed magnetic resonance imaging to map brain structures of 100 female students and 100 male students. The men and women were similar in age, parental education and proportion of students who were right- or left-handed.

There were great individual differences in brain organization, brain size and where language and speech are processed, Chiarello said. For most people, speech and language are processed in the left half of the brain.

Differences in brain size account for much of the variance in brain structure size that at first glance might appear to be attributable to sex, Chiarello said. On average, the brains of men in the study were 13 percent larger than the women.

Men and women "confront similar cognitive challenges using differently sized neural machinery," the researchers wrote. Their findings imply that "any sex-specific adaptations to overall brain size are not associated with large relative differences in the size of various cerebral regions. In this respect, our results suggest that brain size matters more than sex."

Study co-authors include Chiarello; Christiana M. Leonard and Stephen Towler of the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida; UCR graduate students Suzanne Welcome and Laura K. Halderman; Ron Otto of the Computerized Diagnostic Imaging Center, Riverside; and Mark A. Eckert of the Medical University of North Carolina.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida.

Thanks Kim!

Quote from Kim

Further information.....

http://newsroom.ucr.edu/news_item.ht...n=page&id=1872

Kim, thanks for that enlightening article.

Odd that the first article says "women did not exceed the capacity of men in tests" while the second article says "men and women performed similarly."

It makes me wonder if the first article was written by a woman....

However, there is a section of the article posted by Kim that sounds... odd. It states (roughly), "In no test did women outperform men."

Now, unless we are willing to postulate that there was something approaching absolute congruity in the results of each and every test, no matter how many there may have been, this second article still seems to imply that men performed better, even if only marginally.

Am I right, or am I missing something?

The research suggests brain size matters more. Men's brains were 13%
larger. I suppose one could go back and nit-pick over the statement that the size of certain regions of the brain did not differ, but, on the whole, there does appear to be an implication that the men did at least slightly better.

I think the study has been slightly misrepresented by some of the sources reporting on it. The actual published results can be found here,

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...?artid=2583156

I only took a minute to scan through it, but it would appear that the test group they used was composed of men and women who were chosen because of their similaritites in regards to age, I.Q., parental education and who had tested similarly in areas of language skills. Using this group, they performed tests to determine differences in cerebral volume, gray/white matter ratios.....