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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   6811 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 11, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Better at learning foreign languages. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a language class.

I'm not sure how true this is, and how much of it is a reflection of interest rather than aptitude. At least even if there's a skew, I don't think it's blatantly obvious.

Better at multi-tasking/task-switching. This one is well known.

I'm pretty sure this is false; pretty much everyone other than rare savants suck hard at multi-tasking/task-switching almost equally.

Better fine motor control. Women are faster typists and have neater handwriting.

Are women faster typists? I think I type faster than every single woman I know.

In any case, I suspect that this stereotype has two components, and the advantage might disappear as soon as these are controlled for:

  • For skills that are learned during formative years, differences in earlier development of girls might lead to e.g. better handwriting; boys that learn handwriting a little later IIRC also have relatively neat writing (I am not entirely certain that this "disproves" superior female fine motor control -- if the boys took longer rather than simply later to be able to learn these properly it would be still be indicative of a difference. Likewise I think girls are quicker to learn to hold chopsticks than boys do very early on in life)
  • For skills involving small components e.g. sewing and knitting, women are smaller generally and have smaller hands and thinner fingers in particular; I think more recent studies have generally shown the increase in motor control in these tasks to be more related to the size of the hands/fingers, with differences disappearing when controlled for (hand/finger) size, implying that this isn't really a difference in neurological control. Though this does still lead to a practical advantage with regards to motor control in daily tasks that matter.

I'm not sure how true (being better at learning foreign languages) is, and how much of it is a reflection of interest rather than aptitude.

Interest is a prerequisite to being good at something, at least if that something requires you to put in the hours, as is the case for language learning. But it actually does look like there are differences in how men and women's brains process language, not just a difference in interest.

multi-tasking/task-switching

See my other comment. This has been shown empirically.

Are women faster typists? I think I type faster than every single woman I know.

You may well be. It wouldn't shock me if typing speed was affected by greater male variance. But nonetheless, 82.5% of court stenographers are women. When typist was a job, it was a woman's job. Secretaries (who do/did lots of typing) are almost all women. I don't think these are coincidences.

Interest is a prerequisite to being good at something, at least if that something requires you to put in the hours, as is the case for language learning. But it actually does look like there are differences in how men and women's brains process language, not just a difference in interest.

I agree with this, I just am unsure about how it translates to learning foreign languages in particular -- at least to the extent that the effect size is huge.

See my other comment. This has been shown empirically.

A brief perusal of pubmed gives me much more mixed results. I'm not convinced.

The world's top polyglots seem to be male, but on average women are pretty clearly more verbal than men. So maybe greater male variability hypothesis comes into play?

I wouldn't disagree, it's just the phrasing of the original reply:

Better at learning foreign languages. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a language class.

Which seems like a stronger observation I have personally observed.

I’ve definitely noticed that among Hispanics, usually women have better English than men.

This could be partly because they are more likely to use their foreign language with more people, more often, which is well known to increase language learning speed. Seriously, as someone who does speak another language, it's always a little difficult not to laugh at people who claim they are trying super hard to learn, but when pressed, admit that 95% of this effort is simply Duolingo, and that they actively avoid using it IRL unless on specifically on vacation.

IME Hispanic men are eager to practice their English with a bilingual man who can help when they come up short- they recognize the value of speaking English when you live in the U.S. and understand that practice makes perfect. Women still tend to be better at English.

Maybe they speak more in social situations?

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