Exploring Sex Differences in Young Children's Reading Skills: Neuroscience EEG and Reading Assessment Measures

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Academic research on sex differences in specific cognitive abilities spans multiple fields, each utilizing different research methodologies specific to the collective branch of science. This thesis draws on neuroscience, education, and sociology methodologies to determine the extent of differences in reading, language skills and brain processing on the basis of sex among young children. Utilizing both educational assessment data and neuroscience EEG data from 56 3rd-8th grade students attending a private school that seeks to counter gender stereotypes, there was an assessment of sight word efficiency, phonemic decoding, letter recognition, and lexical processing. Findings include statistically significant sex differences in letter recognition and lexical processing in EEG data. These results were in contrast with behavioral TOWRE-2 measures of oral sight word and pseudoword decoding efficiency in this sample, which, in contrast to the predictions of the literature on sex difference in reading, revealed equivalent performance across sexes. These results provide support for the use of neuroscience data in educational assessment, further exploration of sex differences in reading and language, and the reconciliation of multiple sources of data from different fields. Findings show promise for the budding field of educational neuroscience and methodical practices in EEG studies.

Type of resource	text
Date created	2021

Subject	Graduate School of Education
Subject	Stanford University
Subject	education assessment
Subject	neuroscience
Subject	education
Subject	sociology
Subject	EEG
Subject	sex differences
Subject	reading
Subject	language
Subject	lexical processing
Subject	letter recognition
Subject	interdisciplinary sciences
Subject	middle grade students
Subject	stereotype threat
Subject	egalitarian pedagogy
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/tj924zf6106

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).

Preferred Citation: McGinley, Caitlyn. (2021). Exploring Sex Differences in Young Children's Reading Skills: Neuroscience EEG and Reading Assessment Measures. Unpublished Honors Thesis. Stanford University, Stanford CA. https://purl.stanford.edu/tj924zf6106

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education

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