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Not So Fast—Sex Differences in the Brain Are Overblown
People love to speculate about differences between the sexes, and neuroscience has brought a new technology to this pastime. Brain imaging studies are published at a great rate, and some report sex differences in brain structure or patterns of neural activity. But we should be skeptical about reports of brain differences between the sexes, writes psychological scientist Cordelia Fine in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Border Bias: Mapping Risk and Safety
I once lived within a short walking distance of a state line, and I had a friend who lived right on the avenue that was the dividing line. That meant she could be cutting her lawn while watching her neighbor cut his lawn in a different state. Living on a border loses its novelty after a while, but visitors always find it intriguing. They seem to expect the Berlin Wall or some other concrete demarcation of an abstract political division. This curiosity arises because of cognitive mapmaking, which is different from regular mapmaking. Cartographers measure and plot distances over land and water, but when we make a mental map, we rely on categories to help us keep things straight.
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Women’s Choices, Not Abilities, Keep Them Out of Math-Intensive Fields
The question of why women are so underrepresented in math-intensive fields is a controversial one. In 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, set off a storm of controversy when he suggested it could be due partly to innate differences in ability; others have suggested discrimination or socialization is more to blame. Two psychological scientists have reviewed all of the evidence and concluded that the main factor is women's choices—both freely made, such as that they'd rather study biology than math, and constrained, such as the fact that the difficult first years as a professor coincide with the time when many women are having children.
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Health Checkup: Kids and Mental Health
About one in five children in the U.S. suffers from some sort of emotional or behavioral condition, according to a new study led by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Among adults with confirmed ills, 50% were diagnosed before the age of 14 and 75% before 24. The estimated annual price tag for the treatment and consequences of juvenile psychological disorders is $250 billion, with those whose conditions are not caught early contributing to that total for years. Read more
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Preschool Promises: Starting Early on a New Educational Agenda for the United States
Two children, both age 3, enroll in publicly funded preschool. But they may have vastly different experiences: One child may attend preschool for 8 hours a day and be taught by a teacher with a bachelor's degree while the other child may be in preschool for only a few hours a day, under the supervision of a teacher with a 2-year degree. Why is there so much variability and are these programs meeting their potential for adequately preparing youngsters for school? In a new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Robert C. Pianta (University of Virginia), W.
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Too Many Sisters Affect Male Sexuality
Growing up with lots of sisters makes a man less sexy. For rats, anyway. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that the sex ratio of a male rat's family when he's growing up influences both his own sexual behavior and how female rats respond to him. David Crews, a psychobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, is interested in how early life affects behavior later. This is an area that has received a lot of attention recently, such as research showing that the position of a fetus in the uterus matters.
