Kersey Alyssa J, Braham Emily J, Csumitta Kelsey D, Libertus Melissa E, Cantlon Jessica F
1Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 USA.
2Rochester Center for Brain Imaging, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY 14620 USA.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2018 Jul 6;3:12. doi: 10.1038/s41539-018-0028-7. eCollection 2018.
Recent public discussions have suggested that the under-representation of women in science and mathematics careers can be traced back to intrinsic differences in aptitude. However, true gender differences are difficult to assess because sociocultural influences enter at an early point in childhood. If these claims of intrinsic differences are true, then gender differences in quantitative and mathematical abilities should emerge early in human development. We examined cross-sectional gender differences in mathematical cognition from over 500 children aged 6 months to 8 years by compiling data from five published studies with unpublished data from longitudinal records. We targeted three key milestones of numerical development: numerosity perception, culturally trained counting, and formal and informal elementary mathematics concepts. In addition to testing for statistical differences between boys' and girls' mean performance and variability, we also tested for statistical equivalence between boys' and girls' performance. Across all stages of numerical development, analyses consistently revealed that boys and girls do not differ in early quantitative and mathematical ability. These findings indicate that boys and girls are equally equipped to reason about mathematics during early childhood.
最近的公开讨论表明,女性在科学和数学领域职业中代表性不足可追溯到能力上的内在差异。然而,真正的性别差异很难评估,因为社会文化影响在儿童早期就已存在。如果这些关于内在差异的说法是正确的,那么数量和数学能力方面的性别差异应该在人类发展早期就显现出来。我们通过汇总五项已发表研究的数据以及纵向记录中的未发表数据,对500多名6个月至8岁儿童的数学认知进行了横断面性别差异研究。我们针对数字发展的三个关键里程碑:数字感知、文化训练的计数以及正式和非正式的基础数学概念。除了测试男孩和女孩平均表现及变异性之间的统计差异外,我们还测试了男孩和女孩表现之间的统计等效性。在数字发展的所有阶段,分析一致表明,男孩和女孩在早期数量和数学能力方面没有差异。这些发现表明,男孩和女孩在幼儿期进行数学推理的能力是同等的。