ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with potential moderators of child g and Fs. It assesses similarities and differences between subpopulations of gender, birth order, adoption, and preschooling groups on General Intelligence and the four faculty factor scores. Preschool girls may enjoy a small advantage for learning novel words, but only if the words are phonologically similar to familiar words. Some studies report that preschool girls are better at understanding emotions than are preschool boys, but others report no gender differences in emotion understanding or social cognition. The General Intelligence and four faculty factor scores computed from the g-and-Fs hierarchical model were used as the dependent variables, and preschool attendance was used as the independent variable. Children who attended preschool scored higher on g and all Fs, but these effects were almost all accounted for by differences in family socioeconomic status. The adoption and rearing of children by adults who are not biologically related to them has a long history and wide distribution.
