16 ms·
Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher
- jacobolus 11y agoHere’s a link to the paper http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103116301202 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103116... Decent discussion at reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/4i75i0/study_shows_boys_outscore_girls_on_reading_tests/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/4i75i0/study_shows...
- coderdude 11y agoThe article does a great job of it, too: "Caveat: The study was relatively small and involved children who were still learning how to read." Your only take-away isn't supposed to be some editor's choice for the title. Added after original post: This is why I don't like the "tl;dr" meme. If people would take more time to absorb the information related to topics we care about, there wouldn't be this desire to have a random person on the net distill that knowledge into something you can consume in 20 seconds or less. It's like getting all of your political opinions from Comedy Central. You're willingly getting your information through yet-another filter, but this filter is presented as unbiased. Edit: parent comment ninja'd what I was responding to, now this looks super off topic.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jacobolus 11y agoThis discussion is a distracting tangent. Apparently it’s now impossible to delete comments after they’ve been responded to, so the best I could do was edit my comment down.
- coderdude 11y agoAh. I see what was going on then. That's bitten me in the past too. This is a distracting tangent. Just so it's clear, I wasn't responding negatively to you. You didn't invent what I'm railing against and as far as I was concerned you were only the messenger of another community's discussion. I don't think you said anything that needed to be edited down.
- wodenokoto 11y agoIt not only seems that boys do better when told it's a game, girls do worse when told it's a game.
- tp101 11y agoI guess it is a bit too simplistic to conclude that the boys prefer competitive environments more than girls?
- Zelmor 11y agoWhat matters is raising and parent models, not gender.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoWhat's your favourite piece of evidence that proves that point?
- tdkl 11y agoProbably tumblr.
- CommanderData 11y agoScientific Journal of Tumblr.
- kuschku 11y agoThat is very likely, considering how different girls and boys are raised in regards to authority and competition. On reddit’s /r/science several people with degrees in the relevant fields have also speculated that this might be the case. From personal anecdote, I can confirm that guys usually care less about what an authority thinks, and more about how they are in relation to their peers, while girls consider competition less relevant.
- mac01021 11y ago
- Zelmor 11y ago"The latest study, in France, involved 80 children, 48 boys and 30 girls" What do i win for spotting errors?
- austinjp 11y agoTwo who declined to reveal their gender? Two intersex children? Hmm, yeah, seems unlikely! Email the editor, or there may be an errata email address.
- tfm 11y agoCertainly would be a very odd control group! Journal article just specifies 80 children, of which 48 were boys, so that would be an arithmetic problem at the WSJ. Lucky they don't deal with numbers on a regular basis :-/ Corrections email address: wsjcontact@wsj.com
- antod 11y agoThere's bound to be a dodgy joke about significant figures in there...
- undersuit 10y agoObviously there were 158 children in total.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- eracle 11y agoI think that 80 children is too small. The different results could as been biased that there were different classes, so different (possibly) skill levels of the students.
- eracle 11y agoI think that 80 children is too small. The different results could been biased by the fact that there were different classes, so different (possibly) skill levels of the students.
- erac1e 11y agoI think that 80 children is too small. The different results could been biased by the fact that there were different classes, so different (possibly) skill levels of the students.
- eracl3 11y agoI think that 80 children is too small. The different results could been biased by the fact that there were different classes, so different (possibly) skill levels of the students.
- er4cle 11y agoI think that 80 children is too small. The different results could been biased by the fact that there were different classes, so different (possibly) skill levels of the students.
- Volt 11y agoWhat sample size would satisfy you?
- tremon 11y agoFor extrapolating the results to the entire Earth population? Let's see, that would require a cross-generational study across a number of different societies, across different schools and classrooms, from different socio-economic situations, and with an equal number of control groups. So we're looking at a minimum of 4 (test moments across 25 years) * 4 (societies) * 5 (schools across socio-economic areas) * 2 (classes per school) * 2 (test + control group) * 30 (pupils per class) =~ 10000 test subjects.
- mgraczyk 11y agoThe paper is paywalled so I can only read the abstract, but I am super curious to learn how the researchers were able to confidently determine the male students' rationale. The researchers claim that stereotype threat caused the male students to perform worse on the reading test when the students were not told the test was a game. How did the researchers figure this out without even asking the students? They are so certain of this conclusion that they put it in the title of the paper. It's amazing how much they could infer from test scores alone. I'm curious to read the paper to determine how they were able to rule out competitiveness, confidence, and every other explanation of the results.
- kuschku 11y agoRegarding the paywall: http://www.sciencedirect.com.sci-hub.cc/science/article/pii/S0022103116301202 http://www.sciencedirect.com.sci-hub.cc/science/article/pii/...
- 131hn 11y agohmmm, so THAT's how it can be used for ! Thank you for the link.
- kaitai 11y agoAsking the students wouldn't help -- very few of us are aware of our unconscious beliefs, especially since they are often in conflict with our conscious beliefs. Asking the students might be an interesting side project on awareness among 9-year-olds, but it won't shed any light on stereotype threat, which encompasses confidence anyway (that's one of the mechanisms). After all, if you can get Asian women in the US to score significantly better and then significantly worse on a math test by first reminding them "Asians are good at math" and then "girls are bad at math", do you think they're going to be able to report on that "rationale"? And if they're aware of it, won't they subvert the whole experiment by using other sophisticated techniques like (1) externalizing difficulty ("that researcher is just a jerk who doesn't know anything!"), (2) reminding themselves of their complex self-identities and membership in several groups ("I'm a complex person; gender stereotypes are societal constructs; and remember, I'm Asian and I'm good at math -- let's use this stereotype for personal good!"), and (3) using previous teachers' communication of high standards and assurance of capability, along with some role models, to blow that test out of the water and confound all the study results? (All of the above are techniques to combat stereotype threat that have been studied and found somewhat to very effective.)
- jokoon 11y agoI'm a man and I really dislike competitive aspects of society. I mean if I'm playing a game and it's for fun, I'm okay with it, as long as everyone play to play, not play to win. If I'm literally competing to earn a living, or if it ends up in praising winners and blaming losers, it won't be enjoyable, and I'd rather not play at all. Having humility also means that when you win, you also congratulate losers for playing. I agree that we need to compete on some aspects, like technology, science, construction methods, and business in general. But competing between individuals brings out the worst in people. And that's where exclusion starts: if you keep slapping people's self esteem by telling them that life and society is a game of winners and losers, you'll end up with less and less people ready to take part in it. Overall, I sense that men avoid competition much more than women do. Or maybe it's the political climate that does. I don't really know.
- rfrey 11y ago"Overall, I sense that men avoid competition much more than women do." That's interesting, and seems a bit contrarian. If you felt like elaborating, I'd feel like listening.
- jokoon 11y agoActually I meant that when you have men relating to each other in a social context.
- andrewflnr 11y agoI don't know if it's a general trend, but men potentially have more to lose in a contest in terms of self- and other-esteem. As a man, I tend to either avoid competitions I don't have a decent chance of winning, or if there's some other compelling reason to join, consciously decouple my pride from the outcome. Otherwise I take it too personally.
- cLeEOGPw 11y agoYou are right and you are probably left leaning politically and are pro immigration, also you are probably not physically strong. The reason for your avoidance of competition is both environmentally affected and genetic. Your parents, maybe even grandparents, were probably raised in an environment where they didn't have to struggle too much at life. This kind of life changes genetic expression in a way that adapts to this environment. It causes rabbit like behaviour - breed as much as possible, don't care to much about offspring, don't care to much about quality of mate, consume food without much competition for it and react only to the current and immediate threat to your life. If threat avoided, don't plan ahead to prevent it. Physically the affected gene expression reduces the size of amygdala which causes individual to be unable to perceive threats. Also it causes the brain to constantly seek novelty and reduces dopamine reward for things that normally would motivate you to seek competition and success. So your avoidance of competition is likely inherited.
- reitanqild 11y agoProtip: some of us can significantly increase our own throughput if we frame tasks like competitions. I'll add a warning about not overdoing this, as someone who has previously burned out before I am careful not to trick myself too often. Edit: at least -> out
- matwood 11y agoThis is how I got through undergrad and grad school. I framed every class and assignment as a competition me vs. the teacher and/or me vs. the other students.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoWhich seems really weird to me - education isn't a competition it's a collaboration with the teacher and the other students. This mindset seems harmful to me as I see it playing out with my kids "teacher X set this homework and will tell me off if I don't do it" rather than "teacher X set this homework and I'll not understand the subject as well if I don't do it". The kids think the homework is "for the teacher" rather than for them. Education is supposed to be an opportunity not a sentence or conflict, isn't it?
- jayshua 11y agoYes, it is. But more often than not the kids can't see it that way. It's a rare child that understands why the teacher wants them to figure out how many watermelons fifty people bought at 3 different stores. Unfortunately, this mindset continues far longer than it should. Highschool students, unlike their elementary counterparts, are more than capable of understanding what education is, but still continue to view it as something forced upon them, rather than for their benefit. I've seen more than a few college students with this mindset as well. The cheer that goes up when the college gives them a day off is a bit disheartening.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI think one of the reasons is the need for autonomy. I was one of the people who more often than not cheered when we had a day off college - because education interfered with my time to learn on my own. Often, I was learning the same (or related) stuff, but without the soul-draining and distracting experience of grading and deadlines.
- toomanythings2 11y agoImpossible. According to the internet, girls are no different than boys.
- dudul 11y agoLet me fix that for you: Impossible. According to the internet, girls are superior to boys in everything.
- pasquinelli 11y agoit's more subtle than that. it's more like, any differences between boys and girls either are completely uninteresting, or can't necessarily be attributed to any particular boy or girl.
- ttyl0125 11y agoA single study with n=80, in a social psych journal, with a trendy soundbite conclusion? Of course it's not a false positive! The fact that the authors cite a paper by Jens Foerster is icing on the cake.
- arvinjoar 11y agon=80 is actually not bad, if that's what you're implying. There are a lot of studies that are n=30 since that's the rule of thumb most follow.
- kelukelugames 11y agoThe n isn't the bad part. I'm skeptical of all psych studies. Readers extrapolate too much from simple, controlled experiments.
- jacalata 11y agoI guess you think science would be better off just memory-holing results that you don't want to know about, is that right?
- Wintamute 11y agoGender discussion is too often framed as male vs. female these days. That's come from 30+ years of flawed output from the social science echo chamber and dogmatic denial of human nature. It doesn't matter if boys and girls do better under different conditions, they shouldn't be expected to perform equally in this way. What matters is that we understand those unique conditions and help children thrive whatever their gender. It's great to see research like this, especially when boys across the western world are struggling in academic environments that are perhaps favouring ways of learning more suited to girls.
- littletimmy 11y agoYou mean whatever their sex? Gender is such a strange term.
- hk__2 11y agoSex is the biology; Gender is the identity. Discrimations are based on gender, not sex. Women are told to wear pink dresses because of how our society see women (female gender), not because they have a vagina (female sex).
- taneq 11y ago> Women are told to wear pink dresses because of how our society see women (female gender), not because they have a vagina (female sex). Really? I'm pretty sure a large part of any discrimination against women is due to their physical sex, not the way they identify.
- littletimmy 11y agoWhy does one need a gender identity?
- mc32 11y agoWe only need it because we live in groups. If we were all by ourselves we would not need this language (and much other language). Much of language is for signaling.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wapapaloobop 11y agoWow. And after the study they went to the cafeteria and ate food from intentionally smaller plates which tricked their brains into believing they were full -- for about a week. Psychology is so full of lies. Both the content of the 'studies' and the studies themselves (all testing and no theory). Also the motivations for the studies seem to be quite often political. (Presumably this helps for obtaining public money.) Here's a little study I propose. Have children, don't send them to school and notice how they learn to read without teaching or testing. And how much better adults report they feel when they aren't trying to do these things to children.
- goda90 11y agoSurely you can't mean without teaching. It'd be pretty hard to learn to read without someone teaching you. Perhaps you mean an experiment where a child is raised by a blind caregiver who never talks about reading. Given full access to children's books and other media but no one to tell them about reading, will they pick it up?
- iopq 11y agoIn Russian it's much easier. After someone learns the letter shapes, they're able to read anything. The pronunciation is only ambiguous in terms of stress.
- bzbarsky 10y agoI used to say this, until I actually tried teaching someone to read in Russian. Then I ran into all sorts of weird cases I had never noticed: "ничего" and similar, various silent letters, etc. I mean, I agree that it's much simpler than English in terms of going from written letterforms to pronounced word, but there's still a bunch of weirdness floating around.
- wapapaloobop 11y agoChildren learn to read because it enhances whatever they are most interested in. At present this will usually be video games. Quite apart from the moral aspect, which is usually ignored, this negates the standard argument that "reading is extremely useful for all sorts of activities, therefore it must be taught". Of course, adults may help and answer questions when needed.
- phkahler 11y agoI'm not even sure what they tested has anything to do with reading ability. Other than identifying certain kinds of words in a list, it certainly didn't require comprehension or understanding. The task was actually more like a game that involved words than a reading test. So while they may have observed an effect (still a smallish sample) I don't think it says anything meaningful about reading ability.
- mabbo 11y agoSome statistical problems I can see here: 1. Sample size n=80. You would need a pretty incredible result for a sample size this small to be significant. 2. All students from the same region of France. Will this result carry over to other countries? Other cultures? 3. The treatment groups were chosen from pre-existing classes. Classes whose composition may not be random. It's a cool result, and it should definitely be tried again elsewhere but pop science articles shouldn't be saying this is anything worth talking any yet.
- iopq 11y ago1. What sample size is necessary for a result of this magnitude to be significant? Because boys did 34% better when it was framed as a game. Did they have to double their scores for it to be significant at this sample size?
- mabbo 11y ago> boys did 34% better No, two particular classes of students had their boys do 34%. In reality, the sample size was 4, not 80. They choose 4 classrooms, and saw these results. If the researchers switched the classroom treatment selections, are you certain we would have seen the same result? Or did we really just find out that boys in those two classrooms happen to be 34% better at reading? Those classrooms where boys did worse might have done worse for a large number of other reasons: those schools might be on the 'bad' side of town where less affluent students tend to go (happens all the time in small towns); that classroom might have been the one where the school has put all the trouble-maker kids because they know this particular teacher has the ability to teach those kinds of kids (or, conversely, that class might be the one that saw the huge boost when it was a game); the classes who did worse might have had a classmate dying in hospital that week, and the boys just didn't do very well under those conditions. There are too many other completely reasonable answers that aren't related to the test itself, given the methods used in this study. How I'd repeat the experiment: pool all the children before randomly selecting them for treatment groups to avoid bias from their origin classroom. Edit: And to be clear, I'm not saying the results are incorrect. They might be onto something amazing here. They just happen to be bad at statistics. Maybe they should frame it as a game.
- brainpool 11y agoNo, just no. This kind of articles makes me cringe. The fact that the journalist is obviously aware of the limited scope in the research by stating the caveats makes it unresponsible publishing.
- jamesrcole 11y ago> The fact that the journalist is obviously aware of the limited scope in the research by stating the caveats makes it unresponsible publishing. I haven't read the article, but isn't it the opposite? Isn't it being responsible to state the caveats?
- Kristine1975 11y agoThis. There are always caveats in an experiment. The fact that they are mentioned in the article is a sign of good reporting by the WSJ.
- hasenj 11y agoThis is completely anecdotal, but when I was back in the Middle East, tests essentially were games/competitions. Everyone knew everyone else's scores and they were often announced out loud as the results are handed back. Students who consistently get high scores are looked up to and respected. Your academic performance contributed significantly to your social standing in the classroom. Then I came to Canada and this notion was completely absent. It was one of the many culture shocks. Your grades don't seem to matter that much. The fact that in the media, at least American disney shows, "nerd" is used a pejorative against people who do well academically, was completely puzzling to me (and actually it still is).
- xamuel 11y agoThe fact that "nerd" is pejorative is linked to the way grades aren't read aloud. The "nerd" pejorative isn't about doing well academically, it's more about bragging and obsessing. It's about making academic performance part of your identity. That's what people think is uncool. It's not like the quarterback loses points if he happens to be smart. He just shouldn't flaunt it or obsess about it.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoHm Im an American (and a Nerd) and that doesn't sound at all right to me. The N word is used to denigrate anyone who does well academically. Its used to shore up self-image for those that don't do well I imagine - "Sure Joe is great at this subject but that's Nerdy so Ha! I'm superior to him" There was never any need to brag, to be called a Nerd. Just score well, and the bullies would whisper (and yell in the hall) Nerd!
- meddlepal 11y agoHow did the bullies know Joe did well if he didn't brag?
- karlkeefer 11y agoPraise from teachers. Other visible signals, like reading voluntarily, showing interest in challenging work, etc. I agree that bragging isn't really part of being a nerd.
- Overtonwindow 11y agoBoys likes games and I believe boys are naturally competitive. Tell any boy something is a game, or a competition, and they will treat it as such. It has nothing to do with race, society, culture, or social upbringing. It's as close to human nature as one can get.