Psychological characteristics of boys and girls. Differences in the development and upbringing of boys and girls: let's talk about "typical
Already at the moment of conception, the child receives the main thing in order to become a man or a woman: a set of sex chromosomes. gender is laid at the time of fertilization. It determines the nature of reactions to the conditions of development.
So, the psychological differences between boys and girls. Firstly, these are differences in reactions to the surrounding reality, including public events. Differences in the direction of interests and inclinations. Secondly, these are the stages of the maturation of the psyche, which are necessary for a person to become able to have his own offspring.
Differences between boys and girls can be detected even before birth: boys tend to push their mother harder (when the fetus moves). Physically (on average) boys are stronger. They scream louder and more insistently when they are hungry. They are born with a large weight (by 200-300 g), earlier they begin to hold their heads in a position on their stomachs. Already at an early age, a difference appears: the upbringing of a girl and caring for her are usually associated with many small worries and anxieties, which, as a rule, are not present when raising a boy and caring for him. But on the other hand, for a longer time, the girls are “with their mother” - nearby. Boys, as they grow older, tend to move away to greater distances, which gives rise to parental anxiety.
With age, the differences between boys and girls become more and more distinct. These differences appear long before puberty and are not determined by the nature of education: only the manner of their manifestation depends on it.
It is generally accepted that the child unconsciously imitates the behavior of the parents of the same sex: the boy - to the father, the girl - to the mother. At the same time, choosing the same activities or participating in a common game, they behave differently. For example, helping his father to make something, the boy seeks to repeat his actions, working with the instrument itself. The girl, on the other hand, may well be content only with participation in a common cause, the very fact of helping and supporting role.
The female sex feels the passage of time worse - apparently, a higher emotionality affects. The fact is that it is the emotional state of a person that determines the subjective perception of time. As for space, it is no coincidence that toys preferred by boys are objects of movement, influence, transformation. It is the male gender that tends to disassemble the whole into parts - and not only in thinking (analysis), but also in reality. On the contrary, the toys preferred by girls are imitations of living beings and aids to everyday life. In the mind of a girl from an early age, a person dominates, and everything connected with him. Hence the features of the choice of toys. The space that is of interest to the girl is relatively small. However, it is carefully worked out to the smallest detail and is actually reflected in the mind. On the contrary, for a boy, the space in which the objects of interest to him are located is practically unlimited. For this reason, much of the immediate environment escapes his attention, is not sufficiently reflected in his consciousness. Much depends on upbringing: a girl is more often attracted to household. Boys, as a rule, show less interest in household chores.
Girls are prone to patronage activities - to look after, nurse, take care. Girls tend to teach, instruct, criticize their younger brothers or peers. This is not seen in the relationship of older brothers to their sisters or boys to girls in general.
Girls, as a rule, use the toy for its intended purpose, making mistakes in its use only out of ignorance. Boys, on the other hand, can adapt the toy to various purposes, often not for its intended purpose, consciously finding unexpected uses for it. They are more interested in the device of the toy than its purpose. In constructive games, boys show more ingenuity. They build cities, railroads, focusing mainly on the structures themselves. In similar conditions, the girl does not build cities, castles, but a house, but with furniture, household items, with various decorations.
Male creativity is more innovative in nature, while female creativity is life-affirming, ordering and decorative.
The superiority of boys in spatial memory is manifested in the fact that they know better the territory adjacent to the house, the relative location of certain objects, and transport routes.
Girls have a higher sensitivity to sounds from the first months of life. It is no coincidence that they begin to speak a few months earlier than boys.
An increased interest in people and their relationships gives rise to a female behavior such as gossip. By adolescence, it is clear that gossip is a predominantly female trait. Teenage boys as gossipers are harder to imagine. Differences between boys and girls are also manifested in the fact that girls tend to appeal to elders more often. In similar situations, they are more likely to complain about boys than boys about girls. The female gender is more inclined to trust authorities and rely on authority in difficult cases.
Girls are more efficient. Boys themselves must see for themselves the need for certain actions. The circle of interests of boys is wider than that of girls. In the speech of boys, words that convey actions (verbs, interjections) predominate, while girls are prone to subject-evaluative speech (nouns and adjectives, denials and affirmations).
There are noticeable differences in educational interests. Usually boys are more fond of work, physical education, and of humanitarian subjects - history. Their native and foreign languages are least loved. Girls more often prefer humanitarian subjects - history, literature. Among the unloved subjects, many of them have physics, biology, mathematics. Boys, significantly more than girls, read books on history and travel and travel, but less fiction and especially poetry.
IN free time activities in boys are more varied, but less organized. Outside the house, in an unaccustomed environment, girls quickly get lost, find it hard to find something to do. Going somewhere, they have a specific goal, while the boys find something to do along the way, easier to navigate in an unfamiliar environment and perceive it positively.
On the other hand, boys, as a rule, are worse accustomed to self-service: they awkwardly change clothes and shoes, do not know where to start on duty in the classroom, do not know how to use a broom or a rag. In many ways, this is due to the lack of constant assignments around the house.
Girls are more proud and touchy, more sensitive to criticism. They are more likely to have an increased interest in their appearance, and they are more sensitive to other people's assessment of it.
Another feature of the female psyche is associated with differences in the volume and nature of the conscious and unconscious in the psyche. The man has more thought processes takes place directly in the sphere of consciousness, and his thinking is more logical and critical.
Thus, the male and female sexes are psychologically different in many respects, but in general they are equivalent and equivalent, complementing each other in different ways in a given life situation.
There are conflicting opinions about accounting for gender differences. Kolesov D.V. believes that the differences between boys and girls must be taken into account in the process of education, starting from an early age.
Berne believes that parents and educators need to learn how to approach children based on individual features the latter, and not from the proposed gender differences. Teachers can be sent to courses that will talk about gender bias in pedagogy and how to deal with it. Suggests that seemingly innocuous gender differences in the learning environment nevertheless play a very important role. Berne recommends that teachers and parents consciously create a gender-free environment for children that encourages cooperative play, equal relationships between boys and girls, and participation in games typically preferred by one gender.
Why does nature need male and female
And really, why? After all, once upon a time, plants and the simplest animals did not have this: “he” and “she”. But at a certain stage of evolution, it suddenly turned out that the division of living beings of the same species into male and female organisms is very beneficial. Why?
The answer to this question was proposed in his theory of asynchronous evolution of the sexes by the doctor of biological sciences, geneticist V. A. Geodakyan. He proceeded from the position that two opposing tendencies always struggle in evolution. The first one is the need to preserve what has already been created, to consolidate those features that are beneficial, to pass them on by inheritance, to make descendants as similar as possible to their parents . And the second one is the need for progress, further search and change , the diversity of descendants, among which one will someday appear who will give evolution a new profitable direction and ensure adaptation to new conditions, will expand the habitat. So, the struggle between the conservative and the progressive, the stable and the changeable, the old, the reliable and the new, the unknown, the risky.
These two tendencies are also embodied in the division of living beings into male and female individuals, which gives tangible benefits in the implementation of both tendencies. At the same time, the female sex retains in its genetic memory all the most valuable acquisitions of evolution, and its goal is to prevent their changes as much as possible, while the male sex, on the contrary, easily loses the old and acquires a new one: some of these acquisitions may be useful in the future or already in the present, especially at the moment of occurrence of some extreme conditions. That is the female gender focuses on survival, while the male gender focuses on progress.
Therefore, nature "protects" the female sex, and the male is not so "sorry" for her. On males, all the "novelties" of evolution are worked out. The spread of congenital traits in males is much greater. Women seem to be more the same. Men have more beneficial and harmful mutations (genetic abnormalities). Thus, according to some data, there are 122 deaf boys for every 100 deaf girls. Deviations in color vision are also more common in men. Among children with m, as well as with m, dyslexia, alalia and other speech defects, with mental retardation, etc. significantly more boys. Speech therapy groups kindergartens and other groups for children with developmental disabilities mostly consist of boys.
So, men by genotype (complex of congenital traits) have a much greater diversity than women. But every living being, throughout its life, is influenced by the external environment, the conditions in which it is located, and under their influence it also changes to some extent. For example, the weight of an animal depends not only on the innate properties of the constitution, but also on nutrition, the presence of stress, the need to lead a mobile or sedentary lifestyle. A set of signs of an organism, formed taking into account the influence of the external environment, is called the phenotype.
It turned out that there are also significant differences between male and female. So, observing pairs of identical twins (their genotype is the same), they noticed that even in the case when the twins were separated from childhood and lived in different conditions, in male pairs the similarity was significantly higher than in female pairs. On the contrary, if the twins were fraternal (their genotypes are different, and the influences of the environment are almost the same), then a greater similarity is observed in female couples. Why? Turns out, nature gave females a wider opportunity to change under the influence of external conditions. Therefore, even with the same genotype, a woman can, for example, lose weight or gain weight over a wider range, therefore identical twin girls (one genotype) under different living conditions can differ quite noticeably (different phenotype), and under the same conditions even fraternal twins(different genotype) can become largely similar (similar phenotypes). In boys, external similarity is determined precisely by innate properties and much less by the influence of the external environment.
Thus, with a sharp change in living conditions to which a given species of animals is not genotypically adapted, female individuals can adapt due to phenotypic variability, preserving the entire set of hereditary information - genotypes. For example, with a sharp cold snap, even in individuals "not prone to fullness", the layer of subcutaneous fat can significantly increase. That is, female individuals can leave the zone of discomfort or even death in the zone of comparative comfort and survival (they have better adapted to the cold, they become warm, although they continue to live in the same cold conditions). And male individuals with the same genotype cannot change so quickly and strongly (get away from the cold by changing the phenotype). They only have to die.
With all the changes in the environment, including social ones, males suffer more. But they still have a way out: find another habitat where it would be warmer, or invent a fur coat. The female sex does not need to strain so much, they have already adapted.
It is these differences that determine high predisposition of males to search behavior. This is vitally important for them, this is the way out that nature has given them. And their brain is larger, more advanced in development, but as a retribution - and less reliable, more vulnerable. Search behavior is determined by and the attraction of males (including men) to the development of new spaces, their great ingenuity in difficult situations, propensity to search for non-traditional new solutions, to risky ventures.
All evolutionary progressive features are more pronounced in males. If we, following V. A. Geodakyan, trace the dynamics of the duration of different periods of life in animals (for example, primates) located lower or higher on the evolutionary ladder, we will notice that the period of childhood increases in higher forms animals. So, for lemurs, it is only 2-3 years, for monkeys of the old world - 7 years, for great apes - 8-12 years, and for humans - about 20 years. That is, the lengthening of the period of childhood is a progressive sign, and it is more pronounced in males: in boys, childhood lasts longer than in girls.
Girls and are born more mature for 3-4 weeks, and by the period of puberty, this difference reaches about two years. Then in primary school boys are, as it were, younger than girls in terms of their biological age on whole year. So we got in this conversation about the origins of the differences between the male and female sexes to such conclusions that are already important for educators, parents, and teachers.
So, we know that boys start walking 2-3 months later, they start talking 4-6 months later, complications are more often observed at the birth of boys than at the birth of girls. Women have more miscarriages if they are carrying boys. According to various data, for every 100 conceptions of girls, there are 120-180 conceptions of boys. Often the death of the unborn boy occurs before the woman knows that she is pregnant. Statistics show that among children 7-15 years old, injuries in boys occur almost 2 times more often than in girls. Difficult children are also more often boys. Boys, even very young ones, are more often scolded, less often picked up. In relation to them, the speech of adults often contains only direct instructions (go away, bring, give, do, stop ...), and in a conversation even with one-year-old girls, older ones often mention sensory states (like, love, sad, cheerful ... ).
The physiological side of perception is also somewhat different in boys and girls. It is shown that up to 8 years of age, the hearing acuity of boys is on average higher than that of girls, but girls are more sensitive to noise. In the first and second grades, girls have higher skin sensitivity, i.e. they are more irritated by bodily discomfort and they are more responsive to touch, stroking. Girls' games are more often based on near vision: they lay out their "wealth" in front of them - dolls, rags - and play in a limited space, a small corner is enough for them. Boys' games are more often based on far vision: they run after each other, throw objects at the target, etc. and use all the space provided to them. This cannot but affect the features of the development of the visual system.
In addition, it is shown that boys, unlike girls, require more space than girls for their full mental development. If the space is small in the horizontal plane, then they master the vertical one: they climb stairs, climb onto a closet. If you ask children to draw a plan of the surroundings of their house, then the boys in the drawings reflect more space, fit large area, more streets, yards, houses. And do we know how to use or at least understand and take into account these differences when raising children of different sexes?
Raising a boy, raising a girl
Let's ask ourselves a question: if boys have so many different deviations, if there are many losers and difficult-to-educate among them, then why are almost all outstanding scientists, artists, writers, doctors, composers, designers - men? And why did so many great people do poorly in school? Probably, among the poor boys there are many who will never be able to realize what nature has given them. Why?
Apparently because we don't know how to teach boys. The teaching strategy in both kindergarten and school is most often designed for girls. Both girls and boys are taught more often by women: at home - mother and grandmother, in kindergarten - a teacher ("a mustachioed nanny" is, unfortunately, an unrealizable dream almost everywhere), in elementary school - a teacher, and only in secondary and high school occasional male subject teachers appear. Isn't it too late? Boys and girls have already turned into boys and girls, and all hidden preparatory work to this difficult transformation occurred without the participation of men. Can a woman raise a real man? Hardly. Do you know why? She has a different type of brain and a different type of thinking.
Let's imagine the drawings of children, because features of thinking are clearly manifested in children's drawing. Here the children drew on the theme "space". Before us is one of the drawings. Here is this one: all nozzles and nozzles are carefully drawn, next to it is an astronaut. He stands with his back, but there are many different sensors on his back. Without a doubt, this is a drawing of a boy. And here is another drawing: this one is drawn schematically, next to it is the astronaut - the face, and on the face and eyes with cilia, and cheeks, and lips - everything is carefully drawn. This, of course, was drawn by a girl. At all boys often draw equipment (tanks, cars, planes...), their drawings are filled with action, movement, everything around is moving, running, making noise. And girls draw people (most often princesses), including themselves.
Let's compare the real drawings of children preparatory group kindergarten: boy and girl. The theme is the same "after the snowfall". All the boys in the group, except for one, drew harvesting equipment, and the girls drew themselves jumping over snowdrifts.
Fig.1. Boy Zhenya, 6 years old. A typical drawing by a boy of this age on the theme "after a snowfall".
Rice. 2. Olesya, 6 years old. The drawings of girls on the same topic ("after a snowfall") look something like this. Girls usually place themselves in the center.
If you ask children to draw a road to kindergarten, then boys often draw transport or a diagram, and girls draw themselves with their mother by the hand. And even if a girl draws a bus, then she herself looks out of the window: with cilia, cheeks and bows.
And how do boys and girls respond in the classroom in kindergarten or school? The boy looks at the desk, to the side or in front of him, and if he knows the answer, he answers confidently, and the girl looks in the face of the tutor or teacher and, answering, looks in their eyes for confirmation of the correctness of her answer, and only after the nod of the adult continues more confidently . And in matters of children, the same line can be traced. Boys often ask adults questions for the sake of obtaining some specific information (What is our next lesson?), and girls to establish contact with an adult (Will you still come to us?). That is boys (and men) are more information-oriented, while girls (and women) are more relationship-oriented.
Experts point out that the time required to enter the lesson - the period of development - in children depends on gender. Girls usually after the start of classes quickly gain the optimal level of performance. Teachers see this by the eyes turned to them and build the lesson in such a way that the most difficult part of the material falls on the peak of performance. But they are guided by girls. The boys are swinging for a long time and rarely look at teachers. But now they have reached the peak of performance. And the girls, on the contrary, have already begun to get tired. The teacher immediately noticed this, because. he has established good contact with the girls - he always sees their faces turned to him. He begins to relieve the load, the lesson moves into another phase. And the boys should be given the key material for the lesson right now. But the most important thing has already been given, but they missed it or did not understand it, because at the right time, the level of their performance, the ability to learn difficult knowledge were low. The lesson is over. But was it designed for boys, for the peculiarities of their physiological and psychological functions? Unfortunately no.
If a group of children is asked a question, for example, about the origin of man (this is a study by the Moscow art teacher N. L. Kulchinskaya), then the girls come forward and, interrupting each other, say that man descended from a monkey. The boys are silent. Then they tried to take the girls away and ask the same question only to the boys. Silence first,
and then fireworks of versions: from a monkey, from a "cell of a human rib", flew in from space, etc. Why is this happening?Girls in preschool and primary school age usually have better speech development, they often stronger boys physically, their biological age (even with the same so-called "passport" age) is higher. They push the boys back physically and “beat” them verbally. But their answers are more monotonous, and, apparently, their thinking is more uniform. Among the boys more options individuality, they think outside the box and interestingly, but their inner world is often hidden from us, tk. they rarely reveal it in words. They are silent, and it seems to us that they do not think, are not looking for solutions, but the search is on, it is more interesting and richer than we can imagine.
In the gymnasium, the psychologist (N. A. Gudkova) gave the children of the first grade a number of test mathematical problems with an increasing level of difficulty. Each task added one additional condition. When graphs of the success of the solution were drawn up for each of the tasks separately for boys and girls, the result was somewhat puzzling. In girls, as expected, with increasing difficulty, the number of solved problems decreased and the schedule gradually decreased. Boys, on the other hand, were unable to solve several problems of medium difficulty, but coped much better with subsequent more complex problems. What's the matter?
We carefully solved everything ourselves, and it turned out that typos were made in several problems: one of the conditions that had already been encountered in previous problems was omitted. That is, these problems had no solution, more precisely, they had many solutions. It was these tasks that the boys could not solve or gave one of possible solutions. But what about the girls? And they didn’t even notice the typo and continued to solve problems according to the previously given template.
The same children were asked in class what bricks could be used for. The first answer lay on the surface - of course, to build a house. Then the girls raised their hands and it began ... You can build a "garage", "and also a fence", "and also a barn" out of bricks... Finally, the topic of construction has been exhausted. The boy raises his hand: "You can put a brick in a bucket when mom salts mushrooms - for gravity." A new version. Again, a forest of girls' hands and a variety of suggestions on where you can use a brick as a load. Once again they exhausted the topic, and again the boy: "Bricks can be laid over a fire so that the grass does not catch fire." The girls again pick up this version and give different recipes fire rescue with bricks. And again the boys: "You can put a board on a brick, and you get a swing", "You can throw them like projectiles", etc.
Of course, this does not mean that no girl will ever come up with a new idea, but the trend here is very clear.
Determined that men perform search activities better, put forward new ideas, they work better if it is necessary to solve a fundamentally new problem, but the requirements for quality, thoroughness, accuracy of execution or design of it are not high. And at school, a boy can find a new non-standard solution to a mathematical problem, but make a mistake in the calculations and get a deuce as a result.
Women usually perform better tasks no longer new, typical, stereotyped, but when the requirements for thoroughness, elaboration of details, and the performing part of the task are high. And that's exactly what the school wants. First, it explains how to solve the problem. That is, the search stage is excluded, it is taken over by an adult, and children are required to solve typical problems that were discussed in the lesson. Minimum Requirements to search and innovation, the maximum - to the thoroughness of execution. It's good for girls as well the boy needs a little underexplaining and pushing him to find the principle of the solution. By this, of course, we will not teach him accurate and consistent writing in a notebook, but only in this way will he understand, and therefore remember the principle of decision: what he has reached with his mind is usually not forgotten.
Let's turn to history. V. A. Geodakyan, already familiar to us, recalls that knitting was invented in Italy in the 13th century by men, and for several centuries it was a purely masculine affair. Then women began to master knitting and brought the process to such perfection that men could no longer compete with them and retreated. Now knitting is a purely feminine thing. And so it was in everything. First, the profession was mastered by men, and then women brought it to the heights of perfection.
In any activity that requires searching, fresh, custom solution, ahead of the men. And where the highest performing skills are needed, women are in the lead, or at least not inferior to men. Thus, there are more composers among men, and among good performers there are no fewer women; there are more inventors among men, and both are innovators. Previously, the profession of a cook was a male one. It was they, men, who were looking for new components, ratios, invented recipes, wrote cookbooks, and women cooks perfectly cook according to these recipes. Men are not interested in doing the same thing day after day, such work does not correspond to the peculiarities of the organization of their brain and psyche. That is why men, for example, experience great difficulties when working on an assembly line.
Psychologists believe that women (and girls) outperform men in speech tasks. Even initially non-speech tasks they can solve in a speech way. Men (and boys) outperform women in video-spatial skills, because the performance of spatial-visual tasks requires a search. Special studies have shown that in boys, the specialization of the right hemisphere of the brain in relation to spatial functions, spatiotemporal orientation, and hence best organization those types of activities where spatial thinking is necessary are already available at the age of six, while girls do not even have it by the age of thirteen.
Let's take an example of solving geometric problems. Geometry is the science of relationships and spatial forms.
Boys more often solve a geometric problem using geometric, spatial methods: they mentally rotate the compared figures in space and superimpose one on top of the other.
Girls and women, including usually a teacher of geometry, designate all angles and sides with letters and then act with letter symbols and with learned templates-theorems. Actually, they practically do not use geometric methods. But at school, the principle "do as I do" applies, and the teacher demands from the boy a speech strategy unusual for him to solve initially non-verbal, spatial problems. But geometry is a science for men.
Teachers of higher educational institutions know that it is for female students that descriptive geometry is a stumbling block. The same can be felt when teaching mathematics in high school: girls cope more easily with algebra (counting, manipulations with numbers and formulas), and boys with geometry (spatial thinking, mental manipulations with geometric shapes).
So, speech is better developed in girls and women? It turns out that this statement is debatable. As for the "performing" part of speech, the perfection of the speech process, this side of speech is undoubtedly better developed in women and girls: they have higher speech fluency, reading speed, and better spelling. But that side of speech that is associated with the search: finding word associations, solving crossword puzzles, is better represented in boys and men. This proves once again that forte men - the ability to search for a new non-standard solution, to innovation.
In relation to the male sex, evolution led the selection for quick wits, resourcefulness, ingenuity. It is important for the female sex to survive, and the selection went to adaptability (adaptability to changing living conditions), education. That's why under unfavorable conditions, for example, when our pedagogical influences do not correspond to the individual characteristics of the child's psyche, girls accept an unusual strategy for solving problems imposed by adults, and to a certain extent, better or worse, cope with the tasks. Boys in such a situation try to get out of the control of an adult, not to obey him, because. It is extremely difficult for a boy to adapt to activities that are unusual for him.
And what are the features emotional sphere boys and girls?
A survey of educators and teachers regarding the individual characteristics of the behavioral characteristics of children makes it possible to consider that boys are usually more excitable, irritable, restless, impatient, unrestrained, intolerant, unsure of themselves and even more aggressive than girls. Apparently, in most cases this is true. However, it must be borne in mind that our vision of a child does not always objectively reflect what it really is.
We compared the characteristics given to the same child by parents (almost exclusively mothers, not fathers) and caregivers (also women). To our surprise, the discrepancies were quite significant and different for boys and girls.
So, parents often consider boys to be unemotional when educators note their increased emotionality. At the same time, when assessing the emotionality of girls, the characteristics of both mothers and caregivers coincide. But parents often consider girls to be anxious when neither the teacher nor the psychologist notes anxiety in them. In boys, there are only the opposite cases, when the psychologist says that the boy is very anxious, and the parents declare with full confidence that such a quality is not characteristic of their son.
This means that parents tend to somewhat overestimate the emotionality of their daughters, apparently because it is manifested in their speech and is more obvious, and not to notice the emotional experiences of their sons. That is parents usually understand the inner world of boys worse. Even such seemingly obvious traits of behavior that we usually associate with the concepts of a "fast" or "slow" child are evaluated differently by parents and educators. If in relation to girls they are unambiguous, then boys in the eyes of their parents are more often unnecessarily slow, although educators consider them fast. True, sometimes, on the contrary, it is the educators who complain about the slowness of the boys, and their parents believe that their sons are very mobile and fast. That is, here, too, the disagreements concern almost exclusively boys.
This leads us to think about some significant differences in the organization, in the regulation of the motor and emotional spheres of boys and girls. A person's brain organizes and regulates any activity of a person. You can study the features of the brain using objective neuropsychological tests and direct recording of the bioelectrical activity of the brain during various activities.
First, we conducted a neuropsychological study, which consisted in the fact that the child - at the same time to each eye separately - was presented with a picture, but the pictures were different, and the child did not know this. This test is called dioptic viewing. Usually the children at the same time said that they see only one picture, and called the right one or the left one. Let us now leave the question of the specifics of the processing of incoming information by the left and right hemispheres of the brain and focus our attention on the child's perception of emotionally colored information.
In a number of other pictures, we showed a smiling and sad face, moreover, if the right eye saw a smiling face, then the left eye saw a sad one. After some time, the pictures were swapped, and positive information entered the left eye, and negative information entered the right eye. If we bring all the results for six-year-old children together, it turns out that both boys and girls, regardless of which eye is shown which picture, are more likely to say that they see a smiling face. They see a sad face less often; the eye sees something, the brain receives information about what has been seen, but it is not allowed into consciousness.
And so our children went to the first grade. This is a colossal nervous burden on their psyche. The whole habitual way of life is changing, the external environment in which the child lives is changing, and in response to this, his brain begins to work differently. At the end of the first grade, we did the same study again with the same and new children. In girls, the picture was preserved almost completely and practically did not differ in different classes. But for the boys, this year did not pass without a trace: they began to say more often that they see a sad face. That is negative information began to break through into consciousness, and when perceiving both positive and negative, the brain began to choose the negative more often, which is usually not typical of children's (and maybe even adults') perception.
Importantly, the results of the brain's analysis of positive and negative influences were very dependent on the personality of the teacher who worked with them. At the teacher authoritarian type(the requirement of unconditional obedience, the emphasis on following strict rules, the exclusion of subtle spiritual contacts even with the outward appearance of a benevolent attitude: "I said - you did") such an increase in the brain's mood to accept unpleasant, causing negative experiences, and ignoring the positive, emotionally positive side of the perceived the world is most pronounced.
In those classes where the teacher preferred a democratic type of education (the desire to achieve the desired behavior not through pressure by his authority, not through the requirement of submission, but through the desire to understand the inner world of the child, the ability to hear and understand the essence of his difficulties), children, but first of all the boys were more fortunate, they retained the quality inherent in childhood: to see the world as kind and joyful. And specifically in our case, the boys continued, as before school, to see a smiling face more often and less often a sad one.
Recording the brain biocurrents of children, we also learned a lot about how boys and girls perceive and analyze pleasant and unpleasant influences. We gave children of different ages to feel various objects, and the child did not see them, but touched what was hidden in the box. Some of the items were pleasant to the touch: soft, fluffy, while others were unpleasant - prickly or rough. It is known that babies are very fond of soft fluffy things, they play with plush, fleecy toys with pleasure or touch their mother's jacket made of soft wool. But they hate prickly clothes, rough, prickly objects are usually bypassed.
In children, starting from the age of four, we found differences in brain activity during the perception of pleasant and unpleasant. In girls, brain activity at the moment when they touched a furry object was much higher than in boys. But when the object was unpleasant to the touch, the brains of the boys showed great activity. Three-year-olds did not have such a pronounced reaction: the level of inclusion of the higher parts of the cerebral cortex in the perception and analysis of information did not depend either on the sex of the child or on what emotional sign she wore (Fig. 3). True, more subtle studies show that even in such babies, different brain structures are included in this activity differently.
Fig.3. The bars show the level of activity of the left hemisphere of the brain of children during palpation different items.
If we follow how the activity of the brain changes over the course of long-term activity, which is of an emotional nature, then surprises await us here too. Preschool children watched and listened to the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood". From time to time the action was interrupted and the children were allowed to feel, among others, an object that was invisible to them, pleasant to the touch (it was a fox's foot from an old collar, covered with soft wool). Once they did this before the tragic events of the fairy tale, and the adult called the object: "this is a paw." Another time, the tale was interrupted after the wolf rushed at Little Red Riding Hood (but had not yet had time to eat it) - the children again felt the same paw, but the adult suddenly told them: "This is the wolf's paw."
Of course, this evoked unpleasant emotions in most children: some froze, others threw the object, their eyes widened, vegetative reactions showed the presence of emotions. Then the fairy tale was shown again, and when the wolf rushed at Little Red Riding Hood, they again let the same object be felt. Children, of course, immediately recognized him. The adult again said: "this is the paw of the wolf."
But not all children experienced negative emotions. Some rare children (and these were girls) smiled when they recognized the object, and joyfully reported that they thought it was a wolf's paw. For them, it was more important not what happened in the fairy tale, but whether they guessed what kind of object the adult had given them. The main thing for them is to establish contact with an adult, to correctly complete the task given by the adult, and not to worry about Little Red Riding Hood. As soon as the adult got involved in the activity, he began to give some tasks, in this case feel the object, - the attitude of these girls changed and completely switched to contact with an adult. One might think that they also watched the fairy tale now in order to be able to remember everything and, if necessary, answer questions. The boys, however, like many girls, watched the fairy tale, almost not paying attention to the adult until he interrupted them from the action of the fairy tale to perform some tasks, but even then they still lived in a fairy tale.
But what was going on in their brains at that time?
In girls, even before the fairy tale was shown, as soon as work with an adult (feeling different objects) began, the level of bioelectrical activity of the brain increased and remained high all the time while the girl watched the fairy tale and felt the objects.
Boys have a different picture. When they simply feel the object, only those centers are involved that are directly involved in the regulation of this particular activity, and the overall brain activity is low. After the paw turns out to be a wolf's paw, activity rises and then falls again. When the boy himself recognizes the object (wolf's paw), the activity rises again and falls again, not even rising at the words of an adult ("this is a wolf's paw"). Moreover, the activity is very selective: the auditory and motor centers of the speech hemisphere are turned on, as well as the frontal structures that program the child's subsequent actions and predict the result.
You can think that the boys comprehend the situation and prepare a way out of it. In girls, the entire brain is activated: the visual, auditory, motor cortex, and associative structures of both hemispheres.
So, boys briefly, but vividly and selectively react to an emotional factor, while in girls in a situation of activity that evokes emotions, general activity sharply increases, and the emotional tone of the cerebral cortex increases. The brain of girls, as it were, is preparing to respond to any trouble, keeping all brain structures in a state of readiness in order to respond at any second to the impact that came from any direction. Apparently, this achieves the maximum focus of the female body on survival. Men, on the other hand, usually quickly relieve emotional stress and switch to productive activities instead of experiences.
Adults should take into account the peculiarities of the emotional sphere of boys. It is difficult for mothers, educators and teachers to understand this side of a boy's life - they themselves are different. So it turns out that the mother (or teacher) scolds the boy for a long time, pumping up emotions, and gets angry because he does not worry with her, but, as it were, remains indifferent to her words. No, he is not indifferent. It’s just that he already gave a peak of emotional activity, reacted in the first minutes of the conversation, but, unlike his mother (and sister or classmate), he cannot hold emotional stress for a long time, he is not adapted to this and, in order not to break down, he simply turned off the auditory canal , and the information does not reach his consciousness. He no longer hears you. Your educational efforts are wasted. Stop. Limit the length of the notation, but make it more capacious in meaning, because The boy's brain is very selective in responding to emotional stimuli. If your whole speech comes down to two words: "you are bad," then what do you expect from a boy? He is disoriented. Explain the situation to him very briefly and very specifically - what are you unhappy with.
So, we have come to an important conclusion: a boy and a girl are two around the world. Very often we misunderstand what is behind their actions, which means we react to them incorrectly. If you are already raising a glorious daughter, and you have a son, know that in many ways you will have to start from scratch and your experience in raising a daughter will sometimes not only not help you, but even interfere. The same thing will happen if after a son you have a long-awaited daughter, although there are usually less difficulties here.
A boy and a girl should never be raised in the same way. They look and see in different ways, listen and hear, speak and remain silent in different ways, feel and experience. We will try to understand and accept our boys and girls as they are, as different and beautiful in their own way as nature has created them. But whether it will be possible to preserve, reveal, develop these inclinations, not damage, not break - depends only on you and me.
V.D. Eremeeva and T.P. hrizman
| Job title: teacher of the preparatory group, MDOU " Kindergarten № 44"
The problem of raising and educating a child in accordance with his gender is an urgent task of pedagogical work with children up to school age. social change occurring in modern society led to the destruction of traditional stereotypes of male and female behavior.Gender - social sex, differences between men and women, depending not on biology, but on social conditions, i.e. upbringing and common in every culture ideas about the essence of male and female principles. The urgency of the problem lies in the fact that at present there is a masculinization of girls and a feminization of boys (in other words, it is difficult to make out where the strong sex is and where is the weak one).
Causes:
1. a large percentage of divorces in society;
2. predominance of incomplete families;
3. the dominant role of the mother in the family;
4. passive participation of men in the upbringing of children;
5. lack of a culture of relationships between boys and girls.
6. software and methodological support does not take into account the gender aspect;
7. low interest male teachers;
8. the predominance of “girlish” materials and manuals in the subject-developing environment.
Gender culture involves:
1. the formation of ideas about life purpose
2. men and women inherent in them positive qualities and character traits.
3. disclosure of mental, physiological and ethical characteristics of boys and girls.
4. formation of ideas about male and female dignity.
The period of preschool childhood is the period during which teachers and parents must understand the child and help him discover the unique opportunities that are given to him by his gender, if we want to educate men and women. The formation of gender stability is determined by sociocultural norms and depends primarily on the attitude of parents to the child, the nature of parental attitudes and the attachment of both the mother to the child and the child to the mother, as well as on raising him in preschool educational institution.
The most productive approach to parenting is not to try to "invest" in a child finished models behavior and force him to conform to certain patterns, but only to create conditions for him in which the adoption of certain patterns will be his personal choice. It's no secret that the education system is absolutely asexual: the everyday "compatibility" of boys and girls in our kindergartens, the daily routine does not take into account the different norms of mobility in boys and girls.
As a result of the analysis of psychological and pedagogical research conducted in Russia and abroad, it was found that it is during the period of preschool childhood that all children living in different countries of the world assume a gender role:
1. by the age of 2-3 years, children begin to understand that they are either a girl or a boy, and designate themselves accordingly;
2. From the age of 4 to 7, gender stability is formed: children understand that gender does not change: boys become men, and girls become women, and this gender identity will not change depending on the situation or personal desires of the child.
How do they differ from each other?
1. Boys are more mobile than girls. For children aged 7-15 years, injuries in boys occur 2 times more often.
2. Difficult to educate - more often boys. They are more often scolded, less picked up.
3. Up to 8 years, the hearing acuity in boys is higher (genetic, memory - you have to track down the game and kill it in order to bring it to your woman) than girls.
4. Girls are sensitive to noise, harsh sounds annoy them. They have more developed skin sensitivity, so girls need to stroke their skin more often.
5. Girls games rely on near vision. They lay out their toys next to them.
6. Boys' games rely on far vision. They run after each other. Throw objects at a target. If the space is limited, then they master it vertically: they climb the stairs, the bedside table. Therefore, boys need sports vertical corners or large spacious rooms for games.
7. They respond differently in class. The boy looks at the desk, to the side if he does not know, or in front of him if he knows the answer. And the girl looks in the face, as if looking in the eyes of an adult for confirmation of the correctness of the answer.
8. Boys are more excitable, irritable, restless, intolerant, insecure and more aggressive than girls.
Scientists are unanimous in only one thing - the formation of gender stability is due to socio-cultural norms and depends primarily on the attitude of parents to the child, the nature of parental attitudes and the attachment of both the mother to the child and the child to the mother, as well as on raising him in a preschool educational institution. Consider the problems associated with gender education children in a preschool educational institution.
Although nonconformity to gender stereotypes creates psychological difficulties for all children, in boys, regardless of their future sexual orientation, such problems are much more common:
1) for boys, at all stages of the formation of gender stability, additional efforts are required, without which development automatically follows the female type;
2) masculine qualities are traditionally valued above women and the pressure on boys towards defeminization is much stronger than on girls towards demasculinization; (a feminine boy causes disapproval, ridicule, and a masculine girl is perceived calmly and even positively);
3) in early childhood, boys and girls are under the influence of mothers and women in general, therefore, with the age of boys, it is necessary to reorient to male patterns of behavior, since atypical gender behavior in childhood has many negative consequences for men, regardless of their sexual orientation.
As a result of numerous studies conducted in our country and abroad, the following was established.
When teaching children to the educator, it is important to consider that girls need incentives that are more built on the basis of auditory perception. Boys do not perceive the teacher's explanation by ear and it is preferable for them to use visual means based on visual perception.
In the classroom for visual activity it is important to create conditions for girls and boys to express what is interesting or emotionally significant for each of them. But when selecting content for teaching children in drawing, modeling and appliqué classes, it is important to remember that the boy's hand in its development lags behind the girl's hand by 1.5 years.
When evaluating the behavior of children and the results of their activities (drawing, modeling, applications, crafts, designs, etc.), the teacher must remember that girls are extremely sensitive to intonations, to the form of assessment, and its publicity. For girls, it is very important to be admired in the presence of other children, parents, etc.... For boys, the most significant is the indication that he has achieved results precisely in this: he learned to say hello, brush his teeth, design something, etc. .P. Each acquired skill, the result that the boy managed to get, has a positive effect on his personal growth, allows you to be proud of yourself and strive for new achievements. But it is precisely among boys that there is a tendency that, having achieved a result in some kind of activity, they are so happy with it that they are ready to design or draw the same thing, which allows them to establish themselves in their achievements, but requires proper understanding on the part of the educator .
Boys are very fond of friendly brawls, which is not a manifestation of aggression and creates a positive attitude in children. emotional background. Educators do not always correctly understand the need for boys in these fights and abruptly interrupt them, depriving the children of the joy that they experience. Obviously, the time has come to form the educators right attitude to such activities of boys and teach them to lead them.
The differences between girls and boys of preschool age are especially noticeable in gaming activity. Scientists note different content and play styles, which often cannot be implemented by children due to the fact that female educators are closer to the quiet games of girls on family and everyday topics. Noisy, motion-filled games of boys irritate educators, as they believe that such games are just meaningless running around and can lead to injury, and, therefore, they have no place in the life of the group and they should be stopped. As a result, boys are deprived of truly "male games", which negatively affects their personal development. In the joint upbringing of boys and girls, a very important pedagogical task is to overcome the disunity between them and organize joint games, during which children could act together, but in accordance with gender characteristics. Boys take on male roles and girls take on female roles. Theatrical activities can be built in a similar way.
The problems connected with the organization of the object-spatial environment require special attention on the part of teachers. It is well known that the environment is one of the main means of development of the child's personality, the source of his individual knowledge and social experience. The object-spatial environment not only provides different types of activity for preschoolers (physical, play, mental, etc.), but is also the basis of its independent activity taking into account gender characteristics. The role of an adult in this case is to open up to boys and girls the full range of possibilities of the environment and direct their efforts to use its individual elements, taking into account the gender and individual characteristics and needs of each child.
The specificity of the process of gender socialization of the child makes it possible to consider the work on sex education already at preschool age to be lawful, and requires continuation at other stages of the child's development. The organization of sex-role education should be carried out in the aspect of a holistic pedagogical system that does not allow underestimation of any of its components.
All the baggage of knowledge passed on to him by adults, the child accumulates over the years. And success in the gender-role education of preschoolers depends only on their competence and literacy.
Dad, how do they know who was born -
boy or girl? After all, on them
no pants or skirts.
K. Chukovsky. two to five
As noted by Isaev D.N., Kagan V.E. in a broad sense, sex is a combination of bodily, physiological, behavioral and social signs, on the basis of which an individual is considered a boy (man) or a girl (woman). The term "sex education" means the influence of the environment on the psychosexual development and formation of the individual.
Kohn wrote that in any human society
boys and girls behave differently;
children of different sexes are expected different behavior and treat them differently.
What role does the upbringing of children play in the formation, consolidation and change of sexual differences?
Primary sexual socialization of the child begins literally from the moment of birth, when, having determined the anatomical sex of the infant, parents and other adults begin to teach him the sexual role. boy and girl.
Primary gender identity, awareness of one's gender is formed in a child by the age of 1.5 years, constituting the most stable, pivotal element of his self-consciousness. With age, the volume and content of this identity change. A two-year-old child knows his gender, but does not yet know how to substantiate this attribution. At 3-4 years old, the child already consciously distinguishes the gender of the people around him, but often associates it with random outward signs, for example, with clothing, and allow for fundamental reversibility, the possibility of changing gender. At the age of 6-7, the child finally realizes the irreversibility of gender, and this coincides with the rapid increase in sexual differentiation of behavior and attitudes; boys and girls, on their own initiative, choose different games and partners in them, show different interests, styles of behavior, etc.; such spontaneous sexual segregation promotes crystallization and recognition of sexual differences.
Parents treat children of different sexes in such a way that their behavior is consistent with the normative expectations adopted for one or the other sex. It follows from this that boys are encouraged for energy and competitiveness, and girls for obedience and caring, while behavior that does not correspond to gender-role expectations in both cases entails negative sanctions. Due to innate sex differences, boys and girls stimulate their parents in different ways and thereby achieve different attitudes from them. In addition, due to the same congenital differences, the same parental behavior can cause different reactions in boys and girls. Parents base their behavior towards the child on their ideas about how a child of a given gender should be.
According to E. Maccoby and K. Jacklin, confirmed by subsequent studies, boys, as a rule, are subjected to more intensive sexual socialization than girls. Boys are more pressured not to engage in behavior that is contrary to gender role stereotypes and demands. Feminine roles are less rigidly defined and implemented less consistently than masculine ones. Boys are punished more often and more severely, but they also seem to receive more rewards and autonomy in their development. The simplest explanation for this fact is that boys are naturally more active and restless, attracting the attention of adults.
Boys from early childhood are given more autonomy in terms of extra-family, social activities. In the formation of a male style of life and activity, such an extra-family factor as a group of peers begins to play an important role very early. On the other hand, even at an early age, girls are subject to increased demands in terms of housework, caring for younger children, and so on. As a result, girls have significantly less time for free play than boys. This is clearly related to the differentiation of the goals of socialization: girls are trained to perform household chores, and boys are prepared for non-family, public activities, therefore they are given greater independence.
The family is the first and closest educator to the child.
The most common features of attitudes are associated with the stereotypes of everyday consciousness. After birth, these stereotypes are actualized: parents see in the child's behavior signs of conformity or inconsistency with what they think a boy or girl should be. Conformity is encouraged, inconsistency is resisted.
In any case, the formation of gender role/identity is influenced by cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. According to these stereotypes, masculinity is associated with activity, strength, confidence, authority, dominance, aggressiveness, intellectuality, and femininity is associated with softness, weakness, passivity, dependence and subordination, conformity, emotionality.
Features of the psychology of boys and girls
As everyone knows, girls up to a certain age overtake boys in the development of many mental functions. They are older than boys of the same age when they enter school, and in adolescence it is simply impossible not to notice. In addition, brain structures develop differently in girls and boys. So, we know that in a person different hemispheres of the brain perform different functions: the left hemisphere is responsible for the logical processing of information, and the right hemisphere is responsible for the figurative-emotional one. In men, hemispheric asymmetry is more pronounced, while in women, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres and allows the exchange of information between the hemispheres is thicker, the exchange of information is easier and the functional specialization of the hemispheres is less pronounced. But this is for adults. In children, there is also such a feature - in boys, the logical left hemisphere develops more slowly and, as it were, lags behind a little. As a result, the figurative-sensual sphere dominates in boys up to a certain age.
Although there is a perception that girls are more emotional than boys, from a neuropsychological point of view, this is not quite the case. The fact is that among boys and men in general there is more than among girls and women a set of individual differences, that is, among them there are more pronounced logic thinkers, writers, artists, mathematicians, scientists and brightly emotional people and criminals. Girls and women, besides the fact that this group is more homogeneous, are also more verbal, and what we often take for emotions are actually just emotional marks shown in their speech. That is, they tend to talk more about feelings, but in terms of the strength of the manifestation of emotions, boys can surpass girls, although they are not always able to say about it. A woman can expressively exclaim “Oh, how I feel sorry for her!”, But this does not mean at all that she is now so overwhelmed with negative emotions that it is difficult for her to restrain herself. This is just an emotional label of the situation - she gave a designation not to her experiences, but to her attitude to the situation and classified it as negative. After that, she can easily switch and do some completely different thing. Boys, although they do not show it outwardly, can experience situations more deeply.
So, we see that with blended learning we actually have a class of different ages. Moreover, boys are in a deliberately disadvantageous position compared to girls - since girls are older in biological age and their speech is better developed.
Some differences in the mental activity of boys and girls should also be noted.
Girls have a shorter period of development, and boys are slower to enter work. And they have different performance peaks. Boys need a high pace. As soon as repetition begins, consolidation - they fall out of the process, attention weakens.
The girls are waiting for the leader to answer. The teacher will ask - silence (even if the answer is known) until one person speaks, and then everyone begins to answer in unison. They kind of work "on the hook". The fast pace bothers the girls. They work better on step-by-step technologies.
The boys have a good competition. For girls, the competition must be applied very carefully, there is a risk of quarreling them all. For girls, assessment from the outside is very important, they perceive it very painfully when someone surpasses them and the assessment is transferred to individuals. According to the observations of teachers, boys and girls quarrel differently. The boys quarreled - they fought, you look - at another break they are together again.
Girls - if they quarrel - the whole class is involved in the situation. They worry, discuss the details, they can sit through the whole lesson inflated, or even take offense at each other for several days. But on the other hand, they arrange reconciliation as a holiday for the whole class.
This feature should also be taken into account - boys need to be included in search activities, they work better when the nature of the questions is open, when you need to think of it yourself, figure it out, and not when you just need to repeat after the teacher and remember the information. They need to be pushed so that they themselves discover the pattern, then they will be in good shape during the lesson, then they will remember and learn the material. That is, they are more suitable for learning through independent problem solving. Boys work better “on the contrary”: first the result, then how we got there. From general to specific. Almost all teachers say that it is more difficult to work in the boys' class, but more interesting.
Girls learn information better when they know the algorithm, when the information is laid out in a diagram. Usually it is not difficult for them to remember a rule or order of operations and then apply it in similar typical situations.
There is another objective difficulty that prevents children, and especially boys, from being successful in education. The fact is that textbooks mostly write left hemispheres- people of a rational-logical type. Just because right hemispheres generally do not like to write. They are better at telling than they are on paper, they need contact with the audience in order to put the thought into grammatical form.
Left-brainers, on the other hand, overload the text with complex grammatical forms that are difficult to understand. Most of our school technologies are designed for left hemispheres. But at the same time, not only is the right hemisphere poorly developed, people of the right hemisphere type are simply eliminated under such a system. And since at the beginning of training, boys are generally more right-brained, they suffer from such teaching methods in the first place.
Boys require a more figurative form of presentation, visibility, they need to live the material in action, and not speculatively. It is usually easier for girls to understand the scheme, the algorithm. And teachers demand a complete answer, so that it is well formulated, and even the way it is in the textbook. And boys, understanding everything, sometimes cannot explain what they understood to someone else.
What is also important to note is that girls have closer contact with teachers. In the classroom, the teacher is likely to pay attention to how girls work - they, as more contact-oriented, often make eye contact with the teacher, which serves as a sign of their readiness for work. Boys, as a rule, look much less at the teacher. And if we also take into account that teachers are mostly women, and it is easier for them to focus on girls, then it turns out that boys at school are under some pressure from girls and women teachers.
Different perception of the world by men and women is explained different structure brain and different social roles which people have been playing for hundreds of thousands of years. In ancient times, a man had to hunt and explore new habitats for his kind, and a woman had to sit in a cave, maintain a fire, cook food and take care of children. Researcher Wilson, who identified the areas of the brain responsible for emotionality, found that in men this area is localized and located in the right hemisphere. Women do not have such localization - they have many areas of the brain associated with emotions. Therefore, a man, solving a problem, may not involve the emotional area of the brain at all (the logic still “lies” in the left hemisphere, and they do not intersect in any way). In women, this does not work out because of the large overlap of zones. Whatever task you do not solve, you will definitely touch emotions.
Men have a certain area in the brain that specializes in solving spatial-coordinate problems. But women do not, for them the coordinate task is solved by other, non-specialized parts of the brain, which is called "according to the residual principle." That is worse. Therefore, women are so bad at reversing parking, determining the distance to the target and not understanding geographical maps.
But women have a specialized part of the brain responsible for speech. Therefore, women prefer professions related to communication. And that's why women are such unstoppable talkers. It is known that information is conveyed to the interlocutor not only by words, but also by intonation, gestures. A woman uses up to 8,000 words per day (data are valid for in English). To this, you can add a couple of thousand interjections and up to 10,000 gestures and facial expressions. Total: about 20,000 signal units. 2000 - 4000 words fall out of a man a day, a thousand and a half interjections, plus in a mean man's arsenal there are about 3000 gestures and facial signals. Total 6000 - 8000 units of information exchange.
For the movement of the mouth and hands in women, the anterior zones of the left hemisphere are responsible - those that are located next to the motor area of \u200b\u200bthe brain responsible for movement. In men, the posterior part of the brain, the one closer to the visual part, is responsible for the same actions. Therefore, women have advantages in fine motor skills of their hands (they are good at sewing, for example, or knitting). And in men, due to the proximity of the “hand-motor” zone and the visual zone, there is a tangible advantage in “aimed” activity.
Every second, about 100 megabytes of visual information enters the brain through the human eye. The brain is not able to process so much, so it selects the most necessary. The brain of a man, naturally selected for hunting, provides the selection and analysis of the information necessary for work "at a distance". Therefore, a man has a narrow field of vision. Hunter's vision. A woman, like a horse, has a wide vision of caution. (Here we mean not the difference in vision itself, that is, the structure of the eye, but the hardware difference - in information processing. That is, the difference in the principles of thinking. Our eyes are the same, our brains are different.)
It is because of the narrowness of the field of view that a man cannot immediately find the desired item in the refrigerator or on the shelf in the store. The wife comes up and, with one glance, looking around the space of the refrigerator or display case, she immediately finds what she is looking for.
The following happens - the male hunter, having stopped next to the shelf, begins to helplessly scan its contents with his directed gaze, trying to find the object. female look does not scan, it covers the entire space.
Plus, women are “spiritual souls”, men are “subjects”. Girls and women are more interested in relationships, and boys are more interested in things. That is why, entering an unfamiliar room, full of people, a woman with an all-encompassing vision immediately notes who is present there, who is in what relationship with whom, who is constrained, and who is cheerful. A man, entering the same room, subconsciously makes a subject analysis: marks the entrances, exits, possible ways to retreat. That is why men in restaurants do not like to sit with their backs to the hall or to the exit. Men must keep the hall in sight.
By the way, men and women sleep differently. A man sleeps deeply, like a predator - the electrical activity of his brain drops by 70%. A woman sleeps like a victim - her brain activity drops by only 10%. She is constantly alert. (Data from the work of neuropsychologist R. Gur, University of Pennsylvania.)
All-knowing statistics note that in hotel rooms, men more often occupy the bed that is closer to the exit, to the outside world - the male need to defend the lair against adversity is triggered. outside world. It often happens that if a man for some reason does not spend the night at home, the wife completely unconsciously puts the child to sleep in her place, and she herself takes her husband’s place for the night - on the edge of the bed or closer to the door: she protects the cub, replacing the absent male.
Men and women react differently to sounds. Men can easily oversleep the squeak of a baby - a sound that immediately wakes up a woman. But a man will immediately wake up if a branch crunches under the window: men better hear sounds that, in terms of frequency-amplitude characteristics, are similar to rustling or crunching. And they hate high-frequency sounds - a woman's scream or a child's cry infuriates men, more precisely, they lead them into a state of aggression or panic. This is a normal defensive reaction: a high-pitched sound is a danger signal…..
Recently, my colleague, an English teacher from a neighboring village, told me: “I just recently realized that men and women are just different little animals.”
Summing up, we can say that it was on the difference in the abilities of the two sexes that our civilization was built. Throughout history, men and women in society have been as necessary to each other as a nut is to a bolt, and a bolt is to a nut. Everyone has their own task, their own functions .... all this was true as long as the family was the economic unit of society. But the paradox of modern times is that the last two or three generations of earthlings live in conditions that are completely different from those in which hundreds of generations lived before them. The level of technological development is now such that the family has ceased to be an economic unit. Hence the divorces and abandoned children and, in general, the destruction of the institution of the family. But that, as they say, is a completely different story.
