Biomedical subjects

Paul Irwing

Publications and source records attributed to Paul Irwing.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Intelligence: is there a sex difference in IQ scores?

Arising from: S. Blinkhorn Nature 438, 31-32 (2005); Blinkhorn replies. Steve Blinkhorncriticizes our study of samples of university students, in which we found that the average IQ of men is 4.6 points higher than that of women, as measured by the Progressive (or Raven's) Matrices. He maintains that there is a negligible sex difference in adult intelligence. We believe that the principal error of Blinkhorn's criticism is that he does not consider our result in the context of several other studies showing that adult males have an IQ advantage of around 4-6 IQ points.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Sex differences in means and variability on the progressive matrices in university students: a meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis is presented of 22 studies of sex differences in university students of means and variances on the Progressive Matrices. The results disconfirm the frequent assertion that there is no sex difference in the mean but that males have greater variability. To the contrary, the results showed that males obtained a higher mean than females by between .22d and .33d, the equivalent of 3.3 and 5.0 IQ conventional points, respectively. In the 8 studies of the SPM for which standard deviations were available, females showed significantly greater variability (F(882,656) = 1.20, p < .02), whilst in the 10 studies of the APM there was no significant difference in variability (F(3344,5660) = 1.00, p > .05).

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Sex differences in general knowledge, semantic memory and reasoning ability.

This paper has the three objectives of attempting to replicate a previous study in which it was found that males have substantially greater general knowledge in most fields or domains than females, and of determining how far sex differences in general knowledge are a function of differences in either Gf (fluid intelligence), or experience. The results confirmed the previous study to the effect that males have higher means in a general knowledge factor of approximately.50 d (half a standard deviation). It was found further that there was no significant sex difference in Gf measured by Baddeley's Grammatical Reasoning Test, and only a low correlation between general knowledge and Gf. Analysis of covariance showed that differential experience as indicated by 'A'-level points and socio-economic status had only a marginal impact on the observed sex difference. The results are interpreted as showing that sex differences in general knowledge cannot be explained as a function of differences in either Gf or experience. It is proposed further that general knowledge should be regarded as a new second-order factor and designated as semantic memory.

Adolescent↗