Tidbits: 3 Important Brain Differences

I have heard lots of the research out there on the differences that boys and girls learn but this I think Michael Thompson sums it up nicely.


1. Boys see the world differently. Some research indicates that at 1 day old, boys would prefer to look at mechanical objects while girls wanted to look at faces. This research is controversial but has been somewhat confirmed by the research at 1 year of age when boys would much rather watch movies about cars and girls want to see movies about people. I’m kind of confused why one year olds are watching movies at all, but I’m no researcher. Boys and girls also have a different thickness of retinas and the cones and rods are distributed differently which some believe is the reason boys and girls prefer different colors.

2. Boys don’t hear as well. Infant girls actually hear better at birth, especially in the range of human voices. Some research suggests this is why boys are slower to pick up language. I refuse this let this be an excuse to Monkey’s recent selective hearing.

3. Boys learn language slower and don’t use it as effectively as girls. Any married woman could have told you this. I think for me, this is the most important one as this lack of language rears its ugly head in the form of tantrums when our boys get frustrated with their inability to communicate with us. Research at Yale suggests that men and women actual learn language using different parts of their brain.