Dear List,
Following this fascinating thread, I wonder if I might just sound a small note of caution regarding the conflation of the terms sex and gender?
And I make this cautionary 'ahem', with the sincerest of motives,
as in my primary field (that of psychology), this linguistic swapping is causing considerable confusion.
One, sex, is a biological descriptor. Gender, on the other hand, is a sociological term with its theoretical antecedents in, at best sparse data, and at worst dubious assumptions, made by its original proposers.
Apologies, for jumping in!
Best wishes,
Ieish Gamah MBPsS
On 12 January 2022, at 11:34 am, Mikkel Wallentin <mikkel@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Adding to the critical remarks about sex difference research, I think it is always important to ask the question “why”.
Why would there be a general sex difference in evolutionary pressure on auditory processing for vertebrates?
I can almost think of reasons for song birds and other species where sound is part of mating, but nothing that generalizes.
There is a ton of junk research on sex differences, reporting non-replicable effects. Even when differences can be measured, these may, as has been mentioned, be side effects of other sex differences, e.g. differences in body/head size or axon length (leading to differences in timing).
This does not mean that we should not investigate sex/gender differences, but just that it is important to remain critical. It is also important to differentiate between “dimorphisms” and subtle differences in distributions that may or may not have any real life consequences.
I discuss the question of what constitutes a sex/gender difference in relation to language and the brain here in a paper from 2020:
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-64123-6.00007-2
For a general review on the neuroscience of “dimorphisms” in the human brain, I can also recommend this paper by Eliot et al (2021):
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.02.026
--
Med venlig hilsen/Best regards,
Mikkel Wallentin
Professor, PhD
Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science & Semiotics
Aarhus University
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
Mobile: +45-26716912
1
From:
AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Baskent, D (kno) <00000187abab8d23-dmarc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, 12 January 2022 at 06.56
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [AUDITORY] Sex differences in auditory processing
Dear all,
If you will look for McFadden papers, please also see a commentary we wrote about one of his related papers. The point of this commentary is that maybe sex/gender differences (or race differences also) are not as "well known" as we assume, and there could be a number of confounds in such studies:
When choosing references for such differences, I think it pays to be a bit critical to not potentially spread possibly not very clear or accurate findings.
Ani, your question is a legitimate one, ie, if some effects reported in one small-sample size study would also hold with larger populations, or across a number of studies. What I observe is that often we add an analysis of sex/gender/race factor without a strong background hypothesis for why we should do so, and it feels often this analysis is done just because it has always been done. And then when we find an effect within a small population and for a study that was not necessarily designed for investigating sex differences, we conclude a bit fast that there is such difference. In many listening/speech tests, linguistic skills, musical background or aptitude, own or parents' education level (especially for children), or other demographic factors may actually play a larger role, but somehow instead of such potentially more relevant factors, gender/sex difference analysis is conducted. I am worried this leads to misleading conclusions.
Where a sex difference is reported, it is sometimes done based on great many assumptions. One big assumption is that what one reports as gender is equivalent to one's sex too. For example, if there is a female-sex related hormone that may have an effect on a hearing-related mechanism, then one's reported gender may or may not indicate the presence of such hormone. How could we know that? Same goes with race effects. One may identify themselves as African-American without having dark skin, while the hearing-effects related to skin color have been shown for melatonin levels. Hence, without measuring melatonin or skin color per se, and just asking participants their self-identified race, again, may lead to wrong conclusions.
Where there seems consistent differences between males and females in literature seems in the hearing thresholds in older age groups, and often these are large-sample studies and seem to hold across different populations across studies. (By the way, it looks like this difference seems to become smaller with younger generations.) An idea related to this is female hormones potentially having protective effects for hearing, as mentioned above, but another idea is environmental factors, such as males being more exposed to louder environments, especially in older generations, such as working in factories with no or minimal hearing protection.
In short, these differences may or may not be there, but I would not say these are well-known. It is not a given. Instead, I would suggest that we all be careful about what a study really measured and was the finding valid; was it really designed to identify such differences,did it use correct paradigms, did it choose appropriate populations, are conclusions interpreted correctly? Also in own studies, are we looking into such differences for good reasons, based on prior work and evidence for it, or just because it has always been done this way and it is easy to throw this factor into the analysis?
This would be my long answer to a seemingly short question. :) Hope it helps.
Best,
Deniz
--------------------------
Prof. dr. ir. D. Başkent
Speech Perception Lab (dB SPL)
Department of Otorhinolaryngology
School of Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience (BCN)
W.J. Kolff Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science
University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG)
University of Groningen (RUG)
Tel: +31 (0) 50 3612665 (Ms. J. Breetveld)
Visiting address: UMCG, Hanzeplein 1, Room P3.248
Website (also for dB SPL): dbaskent.org
Van: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> namens Bernstein,Leslie <lbernstein@xxxxxxxx>
Verzonden: maandag 10 januari 2022 16:45
Aan: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Onderwerp: Re: Sex differences in auditory processing
Google: sex differences McFadden
On 1/9/2022 10:33 AM, Patel, Aniruddh D. wrote:
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Dear List,
I am trying to find papers reporting sex differences in behavioral or neural measures of auditory processing in vertebrates.
I'd be grateful for pointers to any references, including review chapters.
Btw, my impression from the papers I've found so far is that females generally outperform males (e.g., refs below), and I wonder if this holds across a larger
set of studies.
Benichov, J. I., Benezra, S. E., Vallentin, D., Globerson, E., Long, M. A., & Tchernichovski, O. (2016). The forebrain song system mediates predictive call timing in female and male zebra finches. Current Biology, 26(3), 309-318.
Kriengwatana, B., Spierings, M. J., & ten Cate, C. (2016). Auditory discrimination learning in zebra finches: effects of sex, early life conditions and stimulus characteristics. Animal Behaviour, 116, 99-112.
Krizman, J., Bonacina, S., & Kraus, N. (2020). Sex differences in subcortical auditory processing only partially explain higher prevalence of language disorders in males. Hearing research, 398, 108075.
Thanks, and best wishes for the new year,
Ani Patel
Aniruddh D. Patel
Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Tufts University
CIFAR Fellow
Brain, Mind, and Consciousness Program
--
Leslie R. Bernstein, Ph.D. | Professor
Depts. of Neuroscience and Surgery (Otolaryngology) | UConn School of Medicine
263 Farmington Avenue, Farmington, CT 06030-3401
Office: 860.679.4622 | Fax: 860.679.2495
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