GENDER DIFFERENCES ON PLANNING, ATTENTION, SIMULTANEOUS, AND SUCCESSIVE COGNITIVE PROCESSING TASKS

The study examined gender differences on the Das-Naglieri planning, attention, simultaneous and successive processing tasks developed following the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous and Successive model of cognitive processing. The study's two samples of 434 (Grades 2, 6, and 10) and 110 (combined Grades 4 and 5) children included pupils from several schools in a large midwestern suburban school district. The results indicated that boys and girls performed similarly on simultaneous, successive, and attention measures but girls outperformed boys on measures of planning processes. These differences were significant for the sixth graders in the first sample and for the combined sample of fourth and fifth graders. These results suggest that a broader definition of intelligence, one that includes measures of planning and attention in addition to simultaneous and successive processes, might provide useful information when cognitive differences and similarities of the genders are examined. Implications of these findings are discussed.