[...]Girls closing math gap?: Troubles with intelligence #1 « Neuroanthropology[...]…

The reason that I’m opposed to ‘intrinsic aptitude’ is not that I deny biological variability. In fact, being heavily influenced in my thinking by evolutionary theory (see the slides I posted from a recent lecture I had to give on brain evolution, beginning of September), I have more trouble with assertion what humans essentially ARE than acknowledging variation (which, according to Darwinist thought IS the essential quality of any species: variation and constant selective pressure).

To me, ‘intrinsic aptitude’ is an intellectually sloppy, empirically unfounded, developmentally dubious and — in this case — politically retrograde explanatory cheat. That is, confronted by an outcome like test score differences, obviously influenced by a host of variables on a demographic scale, liable to change over historical time and across cultures, can we really buy then that the score differences are simply the result of an ‘intrinsic aptitude’ that we can neither really define nor locate?

I have no doubt that there are genetic influences on math test (and reading test) performance, but I don’t think we help ourselves to find them if we use simplistic explanatory phantasms like ‘intrinsic aptitude’ for math, and then kind of wave our hands and say, ‘they’re genetic!’ when we’re actually confronted to come up with the goods, to show where the aptitude exists. Folks like anthropologists often get accused of being politically-motivated or of denying empirical results when they point out that these ‘intrinsic’ traits and sex differences are actually malleable over time and across cultures, but the critics seldom have any real empirical evidence of ‘intrinsic aptitude.’ Instead, they retreat to the test scores, moaning that there has to be some essential ‘intrinsic’ difference for these gaps to exist — then, when the scores change and the gap moves, shrinks, widens or disappears, they behave like nothing has happened. It’s all unchanged and ‘hard-wired’ and ‘genetic’ (though still, no genetic evidence or candidate genes for testing). Who’s being unscientific?

By the way, I apologize to both Kid Destroyer and Thoughtcounts Z: the above diatribe has little or nothing to do with your comments. I got carried away. I know that’s not what neither of you are saying. And our readers, if they’re interested in the subject, should really check out Thoughtcounts Z’s posting on this article, too. There’s a really good discussion of this research now available across a variety of websites. I just wish we could get some traction on this issue in public consciousness.

Greg

On a related note, in response to Kid Destroyer: I think part of the perception that women would be better than men at reading is that women are supposed to be communicators — both in the sense of being more talkative, and in the sense of being nurturing. Women are supposed to be better at expressing themselves and their feelings, but it’s okay for men to be “strong, silent types.” If women are more social creatures in these ways, it would make sense for women to have the advantage in verbal skills. (I’m not endorsing these stereotypes, just describing them!)

I am curious of something, though. Where does this acceptance of women just being better at reading/verbal ability come from? Why is it okay to say that women are better than men at reading but NOT okay to say that men are better than women (in variance?) than women? I guess my question is: where do people think this comes from? I think I remember that women tend to read much more than men, but I don’t know about this in terms of childhood reading. Could this be the determining factor? I always felt that all the SAT verbal section really measured was how much you read as a kid. People who read a lot did well, people who didn’t read a lot did poorly.

Of course, men could just be worse.