Beatsong wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:Well we know for a fact that women don't speak more than men, as no study has ever been able to find a difference, but even with verbal ability the results are pretty mixed once you look at them past adolescence. The major differences we see in that sense are between boys and girls but this tends to disappear, or at least minimise to a great degree, as they progress through high school.
I'm not saying I believe the superior verbal ability of girls is hardwired from birth - I really don't know enough about it to say. But doesn't what you write here appear to support that hypothesis?
It potentially could be viewed in light of that explanation, but I'd argue that it's not the only (or arguably even the most likely) explanation.
Beatsong wrote:Prepubescent children are subject to much less forceful gender-based socialisation than older adolescent ones. Young kids play together, change their clothes together etc. etc. with hardly a care who's a boy and who's a girl. It's precisely at adolescence that that becomes important to them, and they start reacting much more urgently to social cues, media stereotyping etc, being concerned about being attractive in terms of accepted norms, having a boyfriend/girlfriend etc.
If the difference in verbal ability actively
reduces from that point through to adulthood, that seems at least one nail in the coffin of the idea that that difference is purely due to socialisation. If it were due to socialisation, the increased intensity of gender-based socialisation from that point would surely make it increase, or at least stay level.
I disagree with practically everything you've written there. Enforcement of gender roles is very clear from very, very early on and by around 2-3 years of age boys and girls show clear awareness of gender norms - for example, it's around this age that toy preferences develop, with boys being averse to "girl toys" and girls generally showing a vague preference for "girl toys".
We also know, for example, that adults are more likely to spend time talking to girls (or babies dressed in pink) than they are with boys, so from the moment of birth they are exposed to much more language training than boys receive. In this light, it makes sense that the difference would then disappear at around high school level because they are exposed to formal language training (as well as being thrown into lots of social situations) and this could be enough to help them "catch up".
There's also the argument that the differences are simply due to differences in developmental rates, so it's not that girls are innately wired for language abilities but rather that their brains develop at a faster rate so that their language abilities develop before boys.
These issues are hugely complex though and generally I think anyone pushing too hard one way or the other is probably going to end up speaking beyond the data. We have so much data on gender and behavior, and we're still a point where we can't really confidently pick out any innate differences between the genders - not because no such differences exist but just that there are simply so many confounds that any conclusive statements are (currently) impossible to make.
igorfrankensteen wrote:Rachel stated that "we all know" that developmental processes affect the wiring of the brain and you responded by saying "we all know" no such thing.
Please rephrase your initial comment more carefully so I can better understand your position.
No. You go back and read what I wrote, and respond if you care to, to what I DID say, instead of doing as you have, and attack me for things I did NOT say. If you can't do that, then drop it.
I read what you wrote. Rachel stated that "we all know" that developmental processes affect the wiring of the brain and you responded by saying "we all know" no such thing.
Evolving wrote:What is, in fact, the "connectivity" that is being measured? The sheer existence of neurons linking two locations; the frequency of their use; or something else?
Put simply, the connectome just displays an aggregate taken from multiple samples showing similarities of particular connections between neurons and their associative weight. It's sort of like if you were looking down from a building at a crosswalk and you recorded all of the paths that people took - there would be some variation, but generally you'll get 4 main routes appear (the crosswalk for each of the 4 roads making up the intersection). The connectome would then cancel out the "noise" (i.e. people taking atypical routes, like a guy running diagonally past speeding cars) and would tell us that the movement of pedestrians moves from one light to another.
Evolving wrote:It seems (to a lay person) farfetched to think that social influences would cause neurons to grow where there were none; but perhaps they do. Anyone here know?
I think the reason it sounds far-fetched is because intuitively we still want to accept a kind of dualism; the idea that who we are isn't entirely physical. This is why studies like this capture the imagination of so many people, where they reach the shocked conclusion of: "So you're telling me that my behaviors and thoughts can be found
in my brain?!". Logically though, this shouldn't be that shocking - where else are our thoughts and behaviors going to come from? When we accept that the brain controls those things, then how else do we imagine it to work if there is no physical change representing those things?
More specifically though, as mentioned above the connectome mostly looks at the connections between neurons but there is nothing at all outlandish or controversial about the growth of new neurons in response to learning. In fact, an important component of learning is
neurogenesis, which literally means the growth of new neurons.
Evolving wrote:Edit: or do the social influences affect which of the potential neurons that are going to develop anyway, actually develop, and which remain latent?
If I'm understanding you correctly, I think the process you might be looking for here is neuroplasticity.
igorfrankensteen wrote:I know nothing about neurology, have no opinion either way, and would like to learn what is what on this issue. Mr Samsa's post questioning yours criticising Rachel's made a lot of sense to me reading it. It would be most helpful if the two of you could sort out what you agree on and not get annoyed with each other!
Quite simply, I pointed out that it has NOT been established as fact, that the only reason why male and female brains scan differently, is due to socialization. That contention became popular during the sixties liberation movements, but is not supported by science. [FYI, science has ALSO not found evidence to support the idea that ALL behavioral differences between the sexes are due to biology.]
But nobody has stated that the difference between male and female scans is entirely due to socialisation, so why would you argue against that? Rachel pointed out that learning has a profound effect on brain structure and that
this effect is not an inherent difference but instead a result of socialisation.
It seems like this entire confusion could have been sorted if you had simply explained what your position was from the start, and I could have pointed out that your mistake stemmed from a misreading of Rachel's original claim.
igorfrankensteen wrote:He imagined that I said that learning does not cause any changes in brains, among other things, which is something I did NOT say. Since his post was entirely based on pretending that I said things, it's not up to me to figure out why he can't address what I did say, it's up to him to go back and read what I said, and either respond or not.
There was no "imagining" or "pretending", it was a necessary consequence of your reaction to Rachel's post. As we've now learnt though, this was due to you misreading her post and so the consequence I highlighted no longer applied.