What are the physiological and psychological reasons responsible for Differences between Students?

Differences have been measured in both physiological as well as psychological terms.

We often come across the differences in intelligence and the more narrowly defined intellectual processes such as memory, judgement and problem-solving.

(1) Group Differences:

The group may be formed on the basis of sex, age, caste socio-economic status and personality. We may like to know about such group differences. The information received may be helpful to us in dealing with such group in day-to-day life.

Equality is a dominant concern of the modern time. It refers to equivalent qualifications, equivalent capabilities, equivalent abilities, same rights and same opportunities of learning and of working. But the very ideology of gender is based on an idea of assumed differences between males and females.

The question is whether females differ from males in terms of traits, skills, values and competencies or not. It they are not different, the reasons for discrimination between males and females in various areas or domains have to be studied.

(2) Differences in terms of sex:

Many educationists or educational psychologists compared the performance of males and females as the subject of the study. They divided the sample into two separate categories: males and females. Research studies done in this area have shown such differences on both sociological as well as biological bases.

The studies aimed at achieving a better understanding of differences between two groups formed on the basis of sex. Many of these studies were conducted to find out not only how many average differences in a particular trait the two sexes had but also what other traits and external factors were correlated with each of these sex groups.

It is observed that as far as general intelligence is concerned, males and females appear to be equal. The differences are either related to specific abilities or specific traits. Males show superiority over females in the ability to reason and to detect similarities and in certain aspects of general information.

Girls show some superiority in memory, language and aesthetic comparisons. Males excel in a number of skills and in understanding spatial relations while females excel in verbal aptitude and memory. The female students develop facility in the use of language at an earlier age than the male counterparts.

At pre-school stage, girls have larger vocabulary than boys of the same age and have higher scores in reading, sentence completion and the like. But the differences in terms of intelligence are not such as to call for different roles assigned to them by society. Therefore, in educational programmes there should be no discrimination in the treatment given to boys and girls.

(3) Differences in Terms of Age:

Age influences individual difference as under:

1. With an increase in age, many differences appear in both boys as well as girls.

2. An individual’s ability to adjust to the environment grows with the age.

3. With increasing age the individuals develop ability to deal with more and more different problem solving situations which result in better adjustment with the environment.

4. As a child grows from infancy to maturity, his or her mental powers increase. His or her body, nervous system, brain and its functions mature, there is a maturity and development in the mental capacity.

5. The child grows in experience and this too adds to his or her mental capacity. But as compared to the influence of age in adulthood, we find that its influence during childhood is greater. It means a few years in the age of the child make much more difference than a few years in the life of an adult.

6. Age differences in mental growth of the same child are not the same. During certain periods of growth these changes are rapid while during other periods they are not.

7. Some people believe that the changes occurring due to change in age stop at a specific age i.e. 15 or 16 while others think that intellectual growth ceases at the age of 20 or 25.

8. After maturation mental growth becomes slow, though some individuals continue to grow intellectually. Recent research studies have proved that there is a great scope for developing mental abilities as we use a very small portion of our brain at a given point of time. Many older people continue to learn, effectively and often in a new direction.

(4) Differences in Terms of Caste:

It is observed that the differences were there in the so called higher mental processes such as reasoning, attention, foresight and judgement. The primitive races excelled in terms of sensory and motor characteristics, keenness of the senses, quickness of response and perception of slight details.

In fact it is very difficult to carry out psychological studies on pure races. When we compare two races living in one country the question of classification becomes very difficult.

The influence of cultural and social milieu gets mixed up with that of variety of hereditary endowments of various ethnic groups. The psychological tests used for such studies are also not available to study such group differences. Certain groups may have excellence in certain areas which could fruitfully be utilized for peer group learning.

(5) Differences in Terms of Socio-Economic Status:

Studies have shown consistent differences between the average ability, achievement and aptitude of individuals belonging to different socio-economic backgrounds.

1. Children with very low mental ability were born to parents of all SES levels but these are much less common amongst those belonging to higher economic status.

2. When scales are used to measure economic status, the correlations between the two come to be about 0.30. It was observed in some studies that when subjects are asked to rank occupational titles on the basis of prestige, these ranking tend to follow the pattern of the differences in intelligence.

3. Knowledge of the meaning of socio-economic class differences are important because such conclusions are significant for social policies in a country tries for equalization of opportunities and has a concern for maximum development of all her citizens. In fact, this is more general hereditary-environment discussion which raises many questions, for example, “Are poor people poor because they are poor? Two Opinions – There are two sets of people as under:

(a) One of them believes that present intelligence tests are not really measuring the potential ability of lower class children. So, lower class children are consistently and repeatedly underestimated and discriminated when compared to other higher class children.

(b) The second line of thinking rests on the hypothesis about the importance of early experiences on general intellectual development.

The cultural deprivation results in differences between these children and the children belonging to other groups which widen with increase in the chronological age.

(6) Differences in Terms of Personality:

Differences in personality make­up bring about differences in intellectual pursuits and achievement. Individuals, due to intellectual diversity in interest and goals, habits, background, mental abilities, etc. seek general outlets for expression realization. Some are extroverts and some introverts.

Some feel comfortable with one learning method while others go for a different learning method. Some are aggressive others are submissive.