Battle of the Sexes
June 22nd 2011 20:36
Who’s smarter, men or women?” It’s an age-old question, and after examining our database, we realized that Lumosity can shed a little light on this contentious topic — though the answers may surprise you.
With over 14 million members scattered across 192 countries, Lumosity has hundreds of millions of brain training results that we can use to compare performance between men and women across a variety of cognitive tasks. Our researchers have combed through these results to shed some light not just on this question, but more generally what training can do to make folks smarter regardless of gender.
The 40 exercises and assessments on Lumosity.com allow us to compare a large number of cognitive abilities. In examining these, we discovered that neither men nor women, in general, are smarter. Rather, each gender — on average — tends to have relative strengths and weaknesses across various cognitive domains.
Our research initially focused on two common and important abilities: verbal fluency and arithmetic. The first task our researchers explored was the game Word Bubbles. This task asks you to generate as many words as you can that begin with a certain three-letter stem. For example, the stem might be “psy-” and you could create “psych,” “psyche,” “psychology,” etc. Looking at data from 78,816 females and 37,744 males who met the criteria for this analysis, we see that, on average, females perform slightly better on this task than males
This sample was drawn from users at the beginning of their experience with Lumosity, i.e. before they’ve done much training. According to the data, the average female could generate 18.6 words per game, while the average male came up with about 16.9 words. So, at least by this measure, we can say that women have the advantage when it comes to generating words. This dovetails with the claims made my most scientific literature that females have, in general, an advantage when it comes to verbal processing in the brain.
That said, let’s now investigate how each gender performs when asked to rapidly solve arithmetic problems. Our analysis of initial performance on the game Raindrops, based on a sample of 23,974 females and 21,618 males, shows a slight male advantage.
The average female was initially able to solve 60.9 equations per game, while the average male could solve 64.6 equations per game. While males have a clear advantage here, it’s worth noting that this advantage (6%, as measured by performance on Raindrops) is not as impressive as the advantage females have when it comes to verbal reasoning (10%, as measured by performance on Word Bubbles).
So what can we conclude from these differences? Well, first of all, the differences in average performance between men and women are quite small on these two tasks (and these are some of the largest differences of any of the games on Lumosity.com). Cognitive performance between the sexes is thus more similar than different. Also, these differences are average differences. There are a great many women who outperform the average man on arithmetic and vice versa for verbal fluency. We can’t, in other words, answer the question, “Who’s smarter: Men or women?” Indeed, we quickly realize this isn’t even the “right” question to ask. The real questions instead delve into the subtle difference across distinct abilities within the larger domain of intelligence.
Secondly — and more importantly — these differences aren’t fixed! With training, anyone can improve. This means that if one cognitive ability lags behind the others, you can make up the difference with the right kind of mental exercise. Let’s look, for example, at what happens to our users after Lumosity training. In the graph below, we have plotted the number of arithmetic problems users could solve per game in Raindrops. The red curve represents the average performance by females as a function of training. You can see the classic training curve, where performance initially shoots up very quickly, and then gradually slows down over time. Dramatic improvements are still happening 25 games out. The blue line represents the initial level of performance for males. It’s clear that the benefits of training far exceed the small initial male advantage. After only two sessions of training, the average female is performing better than the average starting point for males. After 25 sessions, females are outperforming untrained males by over 27%.
The inverse relationship exists for verbal fluency. After only two games, the average male is outperforming the average untrained female. And this basic relationship holds for every task on Lumosity.com. Training outweighs gender differences every time.
The basic message is clear: not only can the brain change in dramatic ways with the right kind of training, but these changes are large relative to the small gender differences produced by genetics and society. Contrary to centuries of misinformation, we can all enhance our cognitive abilities and perform well with sufficient training. This message is central to Lumosity’s mission to make the world a smarter place.
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