Sexualities, Evolution & Gender

6.1 April 2004 pp. 45-53

Human sex differences in

cognition, fact, not predicament
Doreen Kimura
Simon Fraser University, BC, Canada

Abstract
Sex differences in cognition are not trivial nor have the most salient
differences declined over the last three decades. There is compelling evidence
that sex hormones are a major influence in the organization, and perhaps the
maintenance, of cognitive sex differences. Anatomical brain differences are
also well established, though we have yet to associate these firmly with the
cognitive sex differences. While it is reasonable to question the specifics of the
traditional hunter-gatherer evolutionary schema, it is argued that it remains
valuable in providing a paradigm for understanding human sex-differentiated
behaviour, since it is capable of generating hypotheses that can be tested.

Keywords: Cognition, sex difference, hormones

Introduction

The paper by Dr Tone Bleie Evolution, brains and the predicament of sex
in human cognition, in Volume 5 Number 3 of this publication, argues
against the general acceptance of evolutionary influences on sex
differences in cognition, and more specifically, against past sexual
division of labour as a source of such differences. Instead, it emphasizes
the influence of individual life-history of the sexes as a major
determinant.
First I must point out that I cannot take credit for the suggestion that
our hunting-gathering evolutionary history significantly shaped the
behaviour of modern men and women. This is a widely accepted view
Sexualities, Evolution & Gender
ISSN 1479-2508 print/ISSN 1470-1073 online 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tanclf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/14616660410001733397

46 Doreen Kimura

amongst evolutionary-oriented social scientists, as Dr Bleie is surely

aware (e.g.. Lee 1968; Washburn and Lancaster 1968). The division of
labour among extant simple societies reinforces such a viewpoint (Daly
and Wilson 1983).
It may be fair to argue that cognitive psychologists have shown a
too-ready acceptance of the details of the hunting-gathering schema.
Nevertheless, nearly all writers agree that the size of territory roamed
by men has been larger than that of women, for hundreds of thousands
of years (Lovejoy 1981), and this is still the case in modern times
(Ecuyer-Dab and Robert in press; MacDonald and Hewlett 1999).
Moreover, it is an inevitable fact that mammalian mothers spend much
more time in the care of infants than do mammalian fathers, they are
more vulnerable than males, and at least during infants' perinatal phases
are less mobile. These facts alone would predict that females should have
abilities skewed towards wayfinding near a home base, while males would
require abilities fostering the navigation of distant extrapersonal space.
With regard to throwing accuracy, the evidence for the manufacture of
missiles in humans is over 200,000 years old, but the probability that
unfashioned missiles (stones, clumps of earth) were used well before this
is very high. Chimpanzee males are much more likely to throw such
unfashioned missiles than are chimpanzee females, though with limited
accuracy (Goodall 1986).
It is by now a truism that behaviour is determined by both physiological and environmental factors, acting interdependently. Bleie's paper
appears, however, to take the position, common in the social sciences,
that cultural and biological explanations are in competition with one
another. It is true that as we have learned more about the biological
influences on cognitive pattern, the past emphasis on sociological
determinance of sex differences has necessarily diminished, except
perhaps in some feminist writings. However, this need not imply that
cultural influences compete with evolutionary forces. A more rational
view is that cultural norms arose in conjunction with, and in support of,
biological imperatives (Schaller 1997).

Reliability of cognitive sex differences

Another common theme elaborated by Dr Bleie is that sex differences in

cognition are small, unreliable, preliminary, or have dramatically
diminished in recent decades as the experience of men and women has
become more similar. On the contrary, large reliable cognitive sex

Human sex differences

47

differences do exist. Favouring males these are: performance on certain

spatial tasks (particularly mental rotation), throwing accuracy, and
mathematical reasoning tasks; favouring females: verbal memory, and
recall of object locations presented in an array. These differences
approach approximately a full standard deviation (or an effect size of
one) on tests like spatial (mental) rotation, and throwing accuracy; and
are well over half a standard deviation on verbal memory tests and object
location memory tests. Math reasoning tests show slightly smaller average
sex differences, but men are strongly over-represented at the higher end
of advanced math aptitude tests (see Kimura 2002).
Mental rotation tests are highly correlated with tests of navigation,
both simulated and real-life (Galea and Kimura 1993; Moffat, Hampson
and Hatzipantelis 1998; Saucier, Green, Leason, MacFadden, Bell and
Elias 2002). Bleie's suggestion that typing or factory assembly-line work
of the type done by women depends heavily on mental rotation has no
basis in fact.
There are other sex-differentiating tests which show smaller and less
reliable sex differences, and it may be that some of these have declined in
recent decades (Feingold 1992). There are serious problems, however,
in comparing heterogeneous unstandardized tests and heterogeneous
populations over time, since it is difficult to infer why, if there are any,
such changes might occur (Halpern 1989). If we look instead at one
spatial test which has been widely used in standardized form on college
samples since at least the 70s, the Vandenberg mental rotations test, the
size of the sex difference has not changed systematically over the last
three decades (Kimura 2002; Masters and Sanders 1993). Similarly, the
Scholastic Aptitude test of mathematical reasoning (SAT-Math) appears
to have yielded a constant sex difference in USA high school students of
about 0.40 sd favouring males, since 1964 (Donlon 1984).
The tests showing large advantages for women (verbal memory, and
object location memory) have not been extensively studied for as long a
period, hence we can't yet know whether there have been significant
changes over time.

Varieties of spatial ability

I must again point out that it is other authors who have discovered and
elaborated on the nature of the female advantage on object location
memory. It was first demonstrated by Eals and Silverman (1994) through
presentation in succession of two object arrays, with some of the objects

48

Doreen Kimura

having exchanged locations in the second array. Subjects were required to

indicate which objects had 'moved'. A later task (McBurney, Gaulin,
Devineni and Adams 1997) found a large sex difference when an array of
face-down cards had to be turned over in pairs, and whenever two
identical cards were turned over, these were removed from the array.
Women cleared off their cards more quickly than men, indicating again
superior object-location memory. These studies were consistent with
other fmdings discussed in my book, that women more often use unique
objects (landmarks) to find their way than do men. Some of these studies
have indeed employed real-life situations (Saucier et al. 2002).
The evidence so far indicates that the female advantage on objectlocation memory is restricted to situations where object and locus are
processed together. Where location per se is required, men tend to
outperform women (Hoesing, Lewine, Yeo and Edgar 1994; Postma,
Izendoorn and DeHaan 1998). I have not, by the way, related object
location memory to brain asymmetry, as Bleie indicates.
There is a compelling parallel to the human data on landmark use, in
those rodent species in which males traverse a larger territory than
females. Male rats, for example, use geometric cues preferentially in
solving a maze problem, whereas female rats prefer landmark cues. These
tendencies can be reversed by perinatal hormone treatment (Williams,
Barnett and Meek 1990).
Obviously, if men excel on one type of 'spatial' task (e.g., mental
rotation), and women on another (object-location memory), then these
two tasks must somehow depend on different brain mechanisms, despite
the common label. Dr Bleie suggests that the defmition of spatial ability
requires more elaboration than I have given in my book (Kimura 1999),
but in fact I spend several pages (pp. 52-57) discussing the nature of the
various abilities subsumed under the label 'spatial'. The degree
of independence of various spatial abilities can ultimately only be
determined empirically.

Correlation, causality and the null hypothesis

Proponents of the life-history determinance of sex differences in

cognition point out a relation between the past activities of individuals,
and their current spatial abilities (e.g., Baenninger and Newcombe
1995). Bleie refers also to an interesting study (Munroe and Munroe
1971) done in east Africa, in which those children who travelled a greater
distance from home (typically, male children) were also those who

Human sex differences

49

performed best on certain spatial tasks. However, from neither of these

findings are we entitled to conclude that the experiential differences
determined the cognitive differences. All we have are implied correlations
between the two, and one could equally logically argue that it is the
better spatial ability that determines the experience. That is, individuals
with better native spatial ability are more likely to engage in those
life activities that are demanding of such ability. A third plausible
explanation is that another factor (perhaps early exposure to androgens) influences both the life activities and the spatial abilities.
Disentangling these relationships requires more information than that
two things are correlated. Similar commentary applies to Bleie's reference
to the Japanese fondness for paperfolding as an explanation of their
higher scores relative to Western samples, on some spatial tasks.
Bleie has (to me) a puzzling section on the null hypothesis, in which
she appears to take to task empirical researchers for not sufficiently
employing this hypothesis in tests of significance. As far as I am aware,
any test of the significance of a difference, based on normal distributions,
implicitly employs the null hypothesis. It is a given that even when two
normally distributed sets of scores differ as between groups, there will be
substantial overlap between the groups. One may confidently state that
the two groups differ, and it is understood that we are talking of the
average difference. Thus to claim, for example, that on a task on which
men excel, there are nevertheless women who will score higher than the
average man, is to claim the obvious. A more useful statistic now widely
employed is effect size, the difference between two groups stated in terms
of the variability of the scores, or standard deviations.
It seems particularly inappropriate to belabour the use of statistical
procedures with reference to experimental studies, yet allow validity for
'qualitative research' that generally bypasses any numerical statement of
results.

Proximate hormonal mechanisms

Whatever the ultimate causal agents in the appearance of cognitive sex

differences, we know that a potent proximate mechanism is the exposure
to sex hormones. This is too large a subject to review here, but readers are
referred to Goy and McEwen (1980) and to my book which is the focus
of Bleie's critique (Kimura 1999). It is clear that for most mammalian
species, early exposure to androgens or their derivatives (including
estrogens) has a lifelong organizing effect on behaviour. This is not

50 Doreen Kimura
limited to reproductive behaviour but includes nearly all sexually
dimorphic behaviours so far studied, including problem-solving
behaviours. Moreover, variation in hormone levels continues to exert an
influence on behaviour throughout life. It is true that both males and
females have both androgens and estrogens in their physiological
makeup. However, some behaviours (e.g., rough-and-tumble play)
appear to depend exclusively on androgens for their appearance, while
others require estrogens (albeit converted from androgens). In humans,
and perhaps other primates, the role of estrogen in organizing behaviour
may be less critical than it is in non-primates (Smith, Boyd, Frank,
Takahashi, Cohen, Specker, Williams, Lubahn and Korach 1994;
Thornton and Goy 1986).
In young adults, the levels of testosterone in men and women overlap
very little, in that they differ by about 3 standard deviations (Moffat
and Hampson 1996). Evidence outlined in my book, in agreement with
other studies, suggests that higher spatial ability is associated with
levels of testosterone in the low normal male range. Women who have
higher testosterone and thus approach this level do better than women
with low testosterone levels, while men with high (but normal) levels of
testosterone do worse than men with low normal levels.
Since most subjects studied in this way have been Caucasian, we don't
yet know whether this 'optimal level' schema will hold across races,
particularly since there is some evidence of ethnic differences in hormone
levels (Ellis and Nyborg 1992; Ross, Bernstein, Judd, Hanisch,
Pike and Henderson 1986; Soma, Takayama, Kiyokawa, Akaeda and
Tokoro 1975).

Brain mechanisms and cognition

Many reliable anatomical brain differences have been found to
differentiate men and women, from basic structures such as the
hypothalamus, to differences in systems connecting the two hemispheres,
such as the anterior commissure. Some of these have been reviewed in
my book. For Dr Bleie to refer to these systems and/or the brain sex
differences as 'literary fictions' is simply astounding. We don't yet know
the significance of such differences for cognitive function, but to describe
them as fiction is to deny the careful investigations of many respected
scientists (e.g., Allen and Gorski 1990, 1991; Allen, Hines, Shryne and
Gorski 1989; Allen, Richey, Chai and Gorski 1991).

Human sex differences

51

Although we now have a fair understanding of how brain systems

work in mediating certain cognitive functions such as memory, language, and the like, we are still far from understanding how individual
differences, the variation in such functions from one type of person to
another, are mediated by the brain. However, it must follow that if two
groups (such as males and females, left-handers and right-handers, or
masculine and feminine gender types) differ reliably in some behaviour
not simply dependent on physical differences, then their nervous systems
must also differ in some way. Where else could the behavioural
differences reside? This is just as true of learned as of unlearned
behaviours. Brain differences underlying cognitive differences need not,
however, be visible in simple structural features. They may take the form
of differing organizational mechanisms not apparent by simply viewing
the external brain.

Conclusions
Sex differences in cognition are not trivial nor have the most salient
differences declined over the last three decades. There is compelling
evidence that sex hormones are a major influence in the organization,
and perhaps the maintenance, of cognitive sex differences. Anatomical
brain differences are also well established, though we have yet to associate
these firmly with the cognitive sex differences. While it is reasonable to
question the specifics of the traditional hunter-gatherer evolutionary
schema, it is argued that it remains valuable in providing a paradigm for
understanding human sex-differentiated behaviour, since it is capable of
generating hypotheses that can be tested.
Address for correspondence

Doreen Kimura, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University,

Robert Brown Hall, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby BC, Canada V5A
1S6. Tel.: (604) 291-3356, Fax: (604) 291-3427, E-mail: dkimura@sfu.ca
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