EYEnews: CLARITY, FOCUS AND VISION FOR YOUR SIGHT AND YOUR LIFE
Do Boys & Girls See Differently?
They sure do, according to Leonard Sax, author of Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About The Emerging Science of Sex Differences.
And the differences start the day children are born!
Newborn babies were given a choice between looking at a dangling mobile or a young woman's smiling face. Their eye movements were monitored by researchers who did not know the baby's sex.
The boys were more than twice as likely to prefer looking at the mobile, while the girls clearly preferred looking at the woman's face.
Girls seem to be born interested in faces, while boys are more interested in looking at moving objects.
This Is Even More Fascinating...
Boys and girls have different eyes! Here's how:
The retina of the eye contains 120 million rods and 7 million cones. The rods, spread throughout most of the retina, primarily see black and white, are mainly connected to peripheral vision and are sensitive to movement. The rods answer the visual question, "Where is it now and where is it going?"
On the other hand, cones, concentrated in the center of the eye, more readily sense color and texture. They answer the visual question, "What is it?"
The rods and the cones each send their visual information to a different set of cells. The rods are connected to the magnocellular (M) cells, while the cones are connected to the parvocellular (P) cells. M cells predominate in boys; P cells predominate in girsl.
Without going into any greater scientific detail, every step in this pathway is different in females and males. Each set of cells even sends their information to a different part of the brain.
Now, fast forward from the first day of birth to the first day of kindergarten. Suppose you give crayons and a blank paper to young girls and boys and let them draw whatever they want.
The girls will prefer colors like red, orange, green and beige, because those are the colors that P cells are pre-wired to be the most sensitive to. On the other hand, boys prefer colors such as black, gray, silver and blue, because that's the way the M cells are wired.
The result? Girls are much more likely to draw people (or pets, or flowers), while boys are much more likely to draw action, or movement.
Or, as Dr. Sax says, "Girls draw nouns, and boys draw verbs."
Vision is only one of the many differences between the sexes that Dr. Sax addresses in this thought provoking book.
If you're a parent or a teacher, or someone interested in understanding the differences between the sexes, I strongly recommend you read this book. Click here to find out more.
What About Nearsightedness?
The visual differences between boys and girls raise this question: Is either sex more likely to become nearsighted?
I'll give a $50.00 Gift Certficate to the first person who can answer that question.
Email me if you've got the answer. You'll need the research and/or references to back it up.
Care for your eyes,
President
Cambridge Institute for Better Vision
marty@bettervision.com
P.S. Read previous issues of EYENEWS here.
