(Note, there is a diagram of the brain above - not a photo - that would be yuck. It is there because this is brain stuff and it is a generic convention of writing about brain stuff that you have a diagram of a head). The word regulation and its sister, self-regulation, are thrown around a lot in educational institutions without many people having much understanding of the academic basis behind them. What do they actually mean?
According to Else-Quest et al in the meta-analysis, Gender Differences in Temperament, it is the “modulation of reactivity”.[1] It’s your ability to not go off on one when you have some form of negative stimulus, to not tell the teacher the lesson is tedious and his novelty tie embarrassing, to not storm out slamming the door behind you if you have been redirected, to continue with the difficult algebra problem that is foxing you. There are two chief elements to this that are important in classroom situations. Accentuating the positive goes by the name of ‘effortful control’; eliminating the negative is ‘inhibitory control’. You’re clever enough to work out what these are, but a nice way of looking at it is that self-regulation involves suppressing a dominant response (stopping yourself yawning when the teacher tells an unfunny dad-joke) and activating a sub-dominant response (forcing yourself to smile fawningly at him when, in fact, you despise the very cut of his jib).
According to Else-Quest’s meta-analysis, there is a difference in the genders’ abilities to self-regulate, and this is particularly evident in the realms ‘effortful control’. Girls take more low intensity pleasure – the kind you would find in being engaged on a classroom task – than boys. The difference between boys’ and girls’ inhibitory control is small-to-moderate. It is in terms of effortful control (which includes persistence, attention span, attention focus, interest and low intensity pleasure) is very large.[2] Girls, quite simply, are better able to control their attention as they take more pleasure in academic work. This is why they do better at school.
[1] Else-Quest, Nicole M.; Hyde, Janet Shibley; Goldsmith, H. Hill and Van Hulle, Carol A. (2006) Gender Differences in Temperament: A Meta-Analysis, Psychological Bulletin, 132, 1 p. 34.
[2] Else-Quest, Nicole M.; Hyde, Janet Shibley; Goldsmith, H. Hill and Van Hulle, Carol A. (2006) Gender Differences in Temperament: A Meta-Analysis, Psychological Bulletin, 132, 1 pp. 57.
I wonder how much is about biological dimorphism and how much is to do with expectations of differences between the sexes. Unsurprisingly, with a sociological background, I’m more inclined to think it’s socially determined.