July 27, 2012 Timothy Wall, firstname.lastname@example.org,
573-882-3346 COLUMBIA, Mo. – In a University of Missouri study,
girls and boys started grade school with different approaches to
solving arithmetic problems, with girls favoring a slow and
accurate approach and boys a faster but more error-prone
approach. Girls’ approach gave them an early advantage, but by
the end of sixth grade boys had surpassed the girls. The MU
study found that boys showed more preference for solving
arithmetic problems by reciting an answer from memory, whereas
girls were more likely to compute the answer by counting.
Understanding these results may help teachers and parents guide
students better. “The observed difference in arithmetic accuracy
between the sexes may arise from a willingness to risk being
wrong by answering from memory before one is sure of the correct
answer,” said Drew Bailey, a recent recipient of a Ph.D. in
psychological science from MU. “In our study, we found that boys
were more likely to call out answers