a CILab, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences , McMaster University , Hamilton Canada.
Int J Psychol. 2013;48(6):1230-6. doi: 10.1080/00207594.2012.756981. Epub 2013 Feb 26.
Studies of gender differences using primarily young individuals show that males, on average, perform better than females in physical activities but worse than females on tests of verbal abilities. There is however a controversy about the existence of these sex differences in adulthood. Our study used 1271 participants from four cultural backgrounds (Chinese, multi-generation Canadians, Indu-Canadians, and European-Canadians) divided in five age groups. We measured sex differences in the time required for participants to complete a lexical task experiment, and also assessed their verbal tempo and physical endurance using a validated temperament test (Structure of Temperament Questionnaire). We found a significant female advantage in time on the lexical task and on the temperament scale of social-verbal tempo, and a male advantage on the temperament scale of physical endurance. These sex differences, however, were more pronounced in young age groups (17-24), fading in older groups. This "middle age-middle sex" phenomenon suggests that sex differences in these two types of abilities observed in younger groups might be "a matter of age," and should not be attributed to gender in general. A one-dimensional approach to sex differences (common in meta-analytic studies) therefore overlooks a possible interaction of sex differences with age.
使用主要是年轻人的研究表明，男性在身体活动方面的表现平均优于女性，但在语言能力测试方面则表现不如女性。然而，关于成年后是否存在这些性别差异存在争议。我们的研究使用了来自四个文化背景（中国人、多代加拿大、印度裔加拿大和欧洲裔加拿大）的 1271 名参与者，分为五个年龄组。我们测量了参与者完成词汇任务实验所需时间的性别差异，并用经过验证的气质测试（气质结构问卷）评估了他们的言语速度和身体耐力。我们发现，在词汇任务和气质量表的社会言语速度上，女性具有显著的优势，而在气质量表的身体耐力上，男性具有优势。然而，这些性别差异在年轻年龄组（17-24 岁）中更为明显，在年龄较大的组中逐渐消失。这种“中年-中间性别”现象表明，在年轻群体中观察到的这两种能力的性别差异可能“与年龄有关”，不应一概而论地归因于性别。因此，性别差异的一维方法（在荟萃分析研究中很常见）忽略了性别差异与年龄之间可能存在的相互作用。
