“Sex Differences in General Intelligence“
A comment I made recently on Facebook:
“I wonder too if women in their twenties are out-earning men because men take longer to reach our full potential than women. I have seen data that women are developmentally complete intellectually at 22, but this is not seen in men until they are 30. The whole schooling system works better for girls and young women. Arguably, boys should follow a completely different system, and perhaps be schooled separately.”
In the above paper, I found the following passage of great interest:
“Brain development involves two processes: 1) overproduction of brain cells and connections & 2) elimination or “pruning” of excess connections.
The inflection point (mathematically, the change in curve), the arrow on the graph(s) in question, marks the transition from overproduction (increasing until peak) to elimination (falling from peak). The graphs show a clear lag in this transition for males as compared to females.”
Autism is sometimes suggested to result from an overproduction of brain cells and a failure to “prune” them in the normal way. I wonder if autistic males might show improvement as they age because they follow the slower masculine pattern for pruning of excess brain cells.
This is relevant too:
Julian O'Dea 
Posted by Roman Lance on July 25, 2017 at 1:56 pm
I was telling my boys just yesterday that when I was In school I started too early. I wasn’t ready for the regimented life of formal education at six years old and suffered many a tribulation (think nuns and rulers across the knuckles) for not being able to write with the “correct” hand.
But later in life the stuff that seemed so difficult to get a handle on came much easier. I was in my mid twenties and was studying for an engineering degree. I never got the degree, but the math I had such a hard time with in high school made so much more sense by then. I couldn’t believe I had such a hard time with it in high school.
I often wonder how my life would have turned out if I had been allowed to wait longer before starting school with a different system of education that dumped the 12 year model. Something that older children could enter and not face the stigma of having to enter “first” grade 9 or 10 years old.
How many boys would be better served by delayed entry into the formal education system? Probably more than a few.
Posted by Julian O'Dea on August 8, 2017 at 5:19 am
On the notorious Google memo and sex differences:
https://xsplat.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/must-read-google-memo-on-gender/