ChannelNate Blog and ReBlog

Boys And Girls Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear Biological:”One possibility is that boys have some kind of bottleneck in their sensory processes that can hold up visual or auditory information and keep it from being fed into the language areas of the brain,” Burman said. This could result simply from girls developing faster than boys, in which case the differences between the sexes might disappear by adulthood.Or, an alternative explanation is that boys create visual and auditory associations such that meanings associated with a word are brought to mind simply from seeing or hearing the word.While the second explanation puts males at a disadvantage in more abstract language function, those kinds of sensory associations may have provided an evolutionary advantage for primitive men whose survival required them to quickly recognize danger-associated sights and sounds.If the pattern of females relying on an abstract language network and of males relying on sensory areas of the brain extends into adulthood — a still unresolved question — it could explain why women often provide more context and abstract representation than men.Ask a woman for directions and you may hear something like: “Turn left on Main Street, go one block past the drug store, and then turn right, where there’s a flower shop on one corner and a cafe across the street.”Such information-laden directions may be helpful for women because all information is relevant to the abstract concept of where to turn; however, men may require only one cue and be distracted by additional information.”< I would love to see how this research translates into “major implications for teaching children.”