Assistant Professor at Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies

Gender differences in cognition are not clear, because human cognition has been traditionally studied in the distance between biology and sociocultural factors. Given the wide-ranging social changes that have taken place in Iran over the last decade, the present study aimed to identify gender differences in cognitive abilities. To this end, a sample of 661 (including 353 boys and 308 girls) was selected from elementary school children based on stratified random sampling. The participants were measured and compared with other in terms of cognitive abilities. The results showed that girls, regardless of their age, have a better performance than boys in fluid reasoning, block design, forward and reverse digit spam, reading comprehension, symbol search, objects identification, math knowledge and achievement, delayed memory, audio distinction, and comprehensive knowledge. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the pattern of gender differences in cognition has changed to the favor girls in Iranian society as a result of different responses of girls and boys to social change. Since most girls have started from a lower level, they react to and take advantage of social changes more recklessly. It seems that this has also led to their cognitive superiority