PSY210H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Infant Mortality, Gender Identity, Puberty
Lecture 4 – Guest Lecture: Gender Development
Gender identity
- Pereptio of oes self as ale or feale
Typial geder differees
- Anatomical differences
o Reproductive
▪ Very different anatomical structures
o Physical
▪ Males:
o more mature muscular growth
o Larger lungs and heart
o More likely to be miscarried or have atypical development
▪ Ex. more likely to have hemophilia bc only one x
chromosome, more likely to have autism
o Higher rates of infant mortality
o Boys better at gross-motor skills (throwing ball, long distance
jump)
▪ Female:
o Tend to walk earlier
o Puberty earlier
o Better at fine-motor skills (writing, tracing, drawing)
o Brain structure
▪ Brian lateralization
o Extend to how brain function is organized over two cerebral
hemispheres (language more on the left, visual spacial on the
right)
o Male hemispheres are more specialized (more lateralized)
o Females have language centers on both signs of the brain (less
lateralized)
▪ Better recovery from stroke
▪ Brain connectivity
o Parts of the brain have connections to each other
o Female – more neural connections go from side to side across left
and right (across the 2 hemispheres)
o Male – more connections between the front and back – more
lateralization
- Cognitive differences
o Men
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▪ Visual spatial: Better at manipulating objects, constructing 3d forms,
mentally mapping complex figures
▪ Driven by connectivity/Lateralization?
▪ Socialization differences? – boys more likely to be given legos and given
visual special construction like tasks
o Women
▪ Tend to write better and speak earlier, show superior verbal abilities in
early school years (goes away over time)
▪ female children have a bigger vocabulary on average
- Social differences
o Men tend to use more direct forms of aggression, females more indirect
o Girls more nurturing to young children (socialization?)
o Girls more compliant to demands of parents and other adults, boys more
variable
o Girls are better able to identify and express emotion
▪ Better at emotion telling tasks – very small gender differences
- Role differences
o Expressive traits associated with females
▪ Describe emotional functioning and individuals who value interpersonal
relationships
▪ Passive, loving, sensitive
o Instrumental traits associated with males
▪ Describe individuals who act on the world and influence it
▪ Independent, assertive, dominant, competitive
How does gender identity develop?
Biological factors
- Genes
o Chromosome differences
o Set determination (xx = women xy = men)
o As long as have y is male (ex. xxy)
o Sex differentiation
▪ Presence of y chromosome (SRY gene) -> early embryonic testes develop
around the 7-8th week of pregnancy
▪ Absence of y chromosome (SRY gene) -> ovaries develop
▪ Hormones drive the development of external genitalia, chromosomes
only lead to development of testes (leads to release of testosterone and
therefore male genitalia) or ovaries (no testosterone release)
- Hormones
o Powerful and highly specialized chemical substances produced by cells of a
certain body organs and have regulatory effect on the activities of certain
other organs
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Document Summary
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