Gender Differences in Development and Cognitive Skills

Early Motor Development (Age 0-2)

Until age 2, there are no sex differences in milestone behaviors like reaching, sitting, crawling, and walking.

Physical Strength Development

Starting in preschool, sex differences in physical strength emerge and continue to widen past adulthood.

Athletic Ability Strength Gap

Men lift approximately 30% more than women in the same weight category.

Athletic Ability in Technical Skills

Events requiring technical skill, such as archery, show minimal gender differences of about 1%.

Physical Task Confidence

Males report higher self-confidence in male-typical physical tasks, while girls demonstrate higher self-confidence in female-typical tasks.

Activity Level Differences

Males exhibit higher activity levels than females, starting small prenatally and expanding to d=0.64 in elementary school.

Sensation and Perception

Females display slightly higher sensory sensitivity, whereas males exhibit better visual acuity and perceptual speed advantages.

General Intelligence

There are no overall gender differences in general intelligence on standardized IQ tests.

General Math Ability

Meta-analyses show virtually no gender difference in general math ability across school grades (d=0.007).

SAT Math Performance

Males average higher scores on the SAT Math section (e.g., d=0.34 in 2010).

Spatial Visualization

There is a small male advantage (d=0.13) on tasks such as finding simple hidden shapes within complex figures.

Spatial Perception

There is a moderate male advantage (d=0.44) on tasks like locating vertical/horizontal orientations while ignoring distracting frames.

Spatial Navigation

There is a small male advantage (d=0.34) in reading maps and wayfinding using landmarks.

Mental Rotation

There is a moderate male advantage (d=0.57) in rapidly manipulating 2D and 3D shapes.

Memory Performance

Females show an overall advantage in memory performance, including recall of earliest memories, dates, events, and verbal memory tasks.

Early Language Development

Between ages 2 and 6, girls exhibit higher language abilities, particularly in vocabulary size, before boys catch up by age 6.

School-Age Verbal Skills

During school-age years, girls perform higher on reading (d=-0.19) and writing (d=-0.45) assessments.

Speech and Language Disorders

Boys are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with speech and language disorders, such as stuttering and dyslexia.

Early Language Use

Girls aged 1 to 3 are slightly more talkative, with boys using more assertive speech and girls using more affiliative speech.

Attributions for Success and Failure

Women are more likely to attribute personal successes to external factors and failures to internal factors.