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Presentation Script Title Hello Everyone, My name is Daryl and I have chosen topic 2 as my argumentative essay topic, so the question being asked is… “Do Women Mature Psychologically Faster than Men.” Let’s find out. Objectives First lets define psychological maturity. Maturity is the ability to respond to the environment being aware of the correct time and location to behave and knowing when to act, according to circumstances and the culture of the society one lives in. To re-clarify, when someone is mature they are able to adjust their behavior and act appropriately based on their environment. I find that to be able to do this empathy is required in order to assess the feelings of others and looking beyond oneself. One who is psychologically mature should also have developed intelligence to be prudent and aware For that reason, to answer the question of “Do Women Mature Faster than Men”, my objective is to first Explore Behaviors of Boys and Girls in Early Adolescence and Biological Influences to Behavior, and secondly and thirdly the Development of Empathy and Intelligence between Boys and Girls through Adolescence

Evidence #1 Our first source is the psy1011/psy1022 textbook used in this unit. Comparing Girls and Boys we observe their early behaviors to determine maturity. Early Behaviors in young girls they tend to be able to writer earlier and excel in grammar and spelling over boys. They are also able to read emotional signals earlier than boys and are considered more sensitive, kind and empathetic, they are also more emotionally responsive and are more likely to ask for help and offer help. As well as better control of emotions to boys. Lastly they care more about friendships than boys do. On the other hand, Boys tend to be more skilled at manipulating objects, constructing three-dimensional forms and mentally manipulating complex figures and pictures. They are also more physically active and enjoy noisier more physically strenuous games. They can also be aggressive when playing

and are found to push and punch each other more than girls. It is found that from the age of 2 years, boys engage in riskier behaviors and are injured at a rate about 2-4 times compared to girls. Lastly, boys are more competitive, they are more concerned with dominance rather than friendship. As referred to maturity, it can be seen that girls show stronger traits of maturity to boys. The inclination towards empathy and being able to pick up emotional signals are key skills to operating within society and demonstrates maturity. Their ability to write earlier and being better in grammar and spelling over boys also shows an extent of intellectual maturity.

Hormones are the major factor to sex differences in the brain and behavior and consequently maturity. It is widely accepted that men have higher levels of androgens or testosterone and women have higher levels of estrogen. There is a study of girls who were exposed to high level of androgens before birth and are found later to be more aggressive than their sisters who had no such exposure. Despite this, it is important to acknowledge the sex differences in behavior do not only depend on hormones, but interactions of both biological and social forces. For example if young boys are taught to play sports, while young girls are taught to play with dolls, these activities will help develop cognitive abilities and thus brain region vital in determining behavior. Hormones may explain the aggressive nature of boys as discussed in the previous slide. The tendency to be physical and engaging in many risky behavior may be seen as contrary to maturity. It is proven however that upon exposure to androgens, girls can also be aggressive, so this may be the biological factor playing out. It is also important to examine the social factor, in how the different sexes are raised and taught in order to justify behavior. Evidence #2 The second source is a journal article written by Van der Graaff and others in 2014 regarding perspective taking, empathic concern measured on age and levels of puberty.

For the first point of the 2nd source we observe that perspective taking for both boys and girls have increased. Neurological studies attribute this trend for both genders as a result of the maturation of relevant brain regions in adolescence. However, the perspective taking as observed in the left graph only

begin to increase after 15 years, while girls have continued to increase from 13 to 18 years. Our second point suggest that girls have faster brain development. Reemphasizing the discussion before, at 13 both genders have only a small difference in perspective taking. But girls perspective taking continued to increase in 13 to 15 years, while boys did not increase until 15, even showing a slight dip before that as shown in the left diagram. This is due to the faster maturation speed in the cerebral cortical development. Putting the girls two years ahead of boys in intellectual and social cognitive functioning during adolescence as stated by van der graaf. Our third point suggests that testosterone decreases emphatic concern for boys. We found that pubertal processes mainly the increase in testosterone results to the decrease in emphatic concern in boys. This is shown in the study when boys who were physically more mature reported lower levels of emphatic concern over their physically less mature peers at 15 & 16 as indicated by the solid line representing boys who are physically more mature and the dotted line for boys who are less physically mature. Testosterone, predominantly found in males induces an increase in competitive behavior and aggression at times, which consequently reduces empathy. This is in line with other research on adolescent brain development that pubertal processes often influence emotional development.

Evidence #3 The 3rd evidence is a journal article written by Colom & Lynn in 2004, regarding the difference between intelligence in sexes during adolescence measured across age. Standardized tests are used to test the samples IQ. The first point from the study suggests that girls score relatively better than boys in the early adolescence. The results show that girls aged 12-13 perform better relative to boys compared with girls aged 14-15, and girls aged 14-15 perform relatively better as compared to boys than girls aged 16-18. This can be attributed to the faster growth in brain size and neurological developments up to age 15. It is stated that, boys and girls do mature physically and mentally at different rates such that the growth of girls accelerates at the age of 9 and remains in advance until 14-15. In line with that, results show that performance of girls decline relative to that of boys from age 14-15 onwards. Why?

The second point suggest that males have a slight IQ advantage over females in late adolescence. The gender difference in intelligence is a 4.3 IQ point in this study, however another study has calculated the difference to be 4.4 IQ through magnetic resonance imaging. The result of the study is very close to that theoretical prediction. This is attributed to the male’s larger average brain size of approximately 100g. The male advantage in children is masked by the faster maturation of girls and is only shown in the late adolescence. Evaluation of Evidence To evaluate the validity to our sources, we have a strengths and weaknesses table here. Firstly the textbook, the strengths of the textbook is that the information is coherent and organized into well put sequences. It is designed to teach after all. Information is also highly relevant and referenced to other journal articles. Moreover, the textbook provides a wide variety of information covering both developmental and biological psychology. However the textbook is a secondary source. Unlike primary sources, which are pure and straight from the source, secondary sources have layers of interpretation from a different writer than the original writer of the source and thus we view the information through a different lens. In that way it holds less weight than a primary source. The textbook’s information being wide variety comes at a cost of depth. Many times the information is stated with few justifications, merely skimming through the material. Second, the journal article on “perspective taking and emphatic concern”. One of its strengths are in its originality as few studies have addressed gender differences in empathy development across adolescence. The correlation between pubertal status and emphatic concern for boys is a major finding that serves to prove the general idea that most believe, which is boys tend to be less emotional and more logical compared to girls, this may be partly attributed to the testosterone hormone in pubertal development. The weakness of the second source is in its use of self-reports to assess emphatic concern, perspective taking and pubertal status. It isn’t a very objective measure and could be improved by adding a parent reported or observational measure, however considering empathy is an internal process, it may be better to self report despite limitations. Furthermore there is also limited generalizability with these findings as the sample is 95% Dutch. Most participants were Caucasian and from high socio economic families.

Third, the journal article on “The developmental theory of sex differences in intelligence on 12–18 year Olds” The strength of this source is its certainty with its conclusion, stating that 40 datasets support its finding. Irrespective of development, the profile of sex differences in abilities among the Spanish sample it uses are closely similar to that of the United States and Britain, demonstrating its robustness of the findings, despite the difference in cultures. The weakness of the source is in its controversial conclusion, that men are smarter than women by a 4.4 IQ margin. Other findings with different methodologies have suggested that the difference in intelligence between sexes are negligible or not existing, such as the method of correlated vectors by Jensen in 2002.

Conclusion In conclusion, Based on the evidences I have found, there is theoretical and functional basis to assert women do mature psychologically faster than men intellectually and empathetically. Studies have attributed this to faster brain development....