The psychology of sex differences has been the subject of much popularization.

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Several books have been written on psychological, behavioral and cognitive (intellectual) differences between infants, children and adults of each sex by competent scientists for the general educated public.  Infant boys are believed to be more turbulent and fearless and exploratory than infant girls.  School age girls and women are reputed to outperform school age boys and men in discrimination of speech sounds,  fine motor dexterity (elocution,  writing, typing), reading,  singing -and several other abilities which I shall mention later.  School age boys and men are reputed to outperform school age girls and women in mathematics, mechanical reasoning, raw strength, physical endurance, most sports -and several other abilities which I shall mention later.    Finally,  females outperform males,  including in humans, on tasks of odor discrimination.  One study ascertained the generality of a sex difference noted in odor identification ability.   The University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) was administered to four groups of subjects: Black Americans (n = 438), White Americans (n = 1559), Korean Americans (n = 106), and Native Japanese (n = 308). The women of all four groups outperformed the men to the same relative degree. The Korean American group performed better than the Black and White American groups, which, in turn, outperformed the Native Japanese.  A female superiority in olfactory discrimination has also been observed in rats. Women’s olfactory discrimination has been found to peak around ovulation and to reach its trough at menstruation.  Taken together, these data suggest that sex differences in odor identification ability, in humans,  are probably not much due to ethnic or cultural factors, per se. I am interested in trying to understand the biological underpinnings of these sex differences,  and that will be my special focus.   Unfortunately,  very little is known about several such biological mechanisms in humans,  so I will focus more than most psychologists on animal research and on those sex differences that I somehow manage to fit into the biological modeling that I have been developing over the years.