Diferencias de género en las funciones ejecutivas en el tercer curso de Educación Infantil

Abstract

Prior researches in preschool have proved that girls have higher levels of executive functions than boys. Girls use to lead boys in some executive tasks, especially in those that demand inhibitory and emotional control, and those that involve delayed gratification. On the other side, other studies do not find any gender differences in tasks related to executive functions. Nowadays there is a lot of controversy about the influence of gender in executive functions; so that research aims to study whether there is any difference between boys and girls in executive functions. It is expected that girls obtain significantly higher scores than boys. The study involved 66 students (37 boys and 29 girls) from 5 years old, enrolled in the last year of kindergarten, in a private publicly funded school in Granada. Results indicate that subjects present different levels in the variables of memory, inhibition, flexibility and planning. No significant differences in the other variables analysed were found: emotional control and total control of executive functions. In conclusion, gender differences in executive functions remain a controversial area with very different results. Therefore, it would be interesting to conduct longitudinal studies to know if there are gender differences in executive functions, and if these differences remain over time.