Girls are better at reading and writing than boys as early as fourth grade, according to a study, and the gap continues to widen until senior year.

Scientists generally agree that boys and girls are psychologically more alike than they are different. But reading seems to be a(n)________, with growing evidence suggesting a similar ________in writing. The study, published in the journal American Psychologist, provided further ________ to support this view.

David Reilly, lead author of the study, said the study ________the commonly held view that boys and girls start grade school with the same cognitive abilities. “It appears that the gender gap for writing tasks has been greatly________, and despite our best efforts with changes in teaching methods, that does not appear to be ________ over time,” he said.

Factors explaining the results could include learning ________ being more prevalent among boys; the pressure to conform to masculine (男子汉的) ideals and the idea of reading and language being feminine (女性的); and slight________in how boys and girls use their brain hemispheres (半球), the authors believe.

To investigate how ________ levels differed between boys and girls in the U.S., the team studied data collected over three decades in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This database of test scores on over 3 million students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades________national and state performances in a range of subjects, and considered such variables such as disabilities or whether children were English learners. Reading and writing was ________according to children’s understanding of a range of different passages and genres.

________, girls were found to perform significantly better in reading and writing tests by fourth grade when compared with boys of the same age. As children progressed to eighth and twelfth grades, girls continued to ________ boys, but the difference was more noticeable in writing than reading. But what caused this difference in abilities? Evidence suggests ________ problems, such as being disruptive（扰乱性的） in class or being aggressive could be linked to neurological conditions. What is known as lateralization (偏侧化) could also play a role. Boys are believed to use one hemisphere when reading or writing, while girls appear to use both. The data did not, however, provide evidence to argue ________ the two genders having different learning styles.

“Nature and Nurture”（遗传还是环境）

People have wondered for a long time how their personalities and behavior are formed. However, it is not easy to explain why one person is intelligent and another is not, or why one is cooperative and another ___________.

Social scientists are of course___________interested in these types of questions. They want to explain why we possess certain ___________ and exhibit certain behavior. There are no clear answers yet, but two___________ schools of thought on the matter have developed. ___________ one might expect, the two approaches are very different from each other, and there is a great deal of debate between ___________ of each theory. The controversy(争论) is often referred to as “nature and nurture”.

Those who ___________ the “nature” side of the conflict believe that our personalities and behavior patterns are ___________ determined by biological factors. That our environment has little, if anything, to do with our abilities, characteristics and behavior is___________ to this theory. Taken to an extreme, this theory states that our behavior is predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by our ____________.

Supporters of the “nurture” theory, or, as they are often called, ____________, claim that our environment is more important than our biologically based instinctsin determining how we will act. A behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, sees humans as beings whose behavior is almost completely ____________ by their surroundings. The behaviorists’ view of the human being is quite mechanistic(机械论的). They state that, like machines, humans respond to____________ stimuli(刺激) as the basis of their behavior.

Socially and politically, the results of these two theories are ____________. In the US, for example, blacks often score below whites on intelligence tests. This leads some “nature” supporters to conclude that blacks are genetically ____________ in status than whites are. Behaviorists, ____________, say that the differences in scores are due to the fact that blacks are often robbed of many of the educational and other environmental ____________ that whites enjoy, and that, as a result, they do not develop the same ____________ that whites do.

Neither of these theories can yet fully explain human behavior. As a matter of fact, it is quite ____________ that the key to our behavior lies somewhere between these two extremes and that the debate will ____________for a long time is certain.

In Dad’s Army, a British sitcom (情景喜剧) about a home-defense Force, Sergeant (中士) Wilson would often cast doubt on his commander’s various orders with the phrase “Do you think that’s wise, sir?” His doubt, although often ignored, was usually ________.

Many employees must be tempted to imitate Sgt. Wilson when they see their bosses head down the wrong track. But caution often leads workers to keep silent for fear of appearing foolish and offensive and ________ being at high risk of losing their jobs.

A culture of silence can be dangerous, argues a new book The Fearless Organization, by Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School. Some of her cases are from the ________ industry, where staff felt too powerless to make any changes due to their ranks. One was its deadliest accident: a crash between two Boeing-747s in the Canary Islands occurred in 1977 when a co-pilot felt unable to ________ his captain into changing the decision to take off. Another case was that of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003; an engineer who may have diagnosed damage to the shuttle’s wing before the flight felt unable to speak as he was “too ________” at NASA.

In a corporate culture based on ________ and obedience, it may appear that targets are being achieved. But in the long run the effect is likely to be counterproductive (适得其反的). Studies show that fear ________ learning. And when faced with a problem, scared workers find ways of ________ it or getting around it with inefficient practices.

The solution is to create an atmosphere of “psychological safety” whereby workers can speak their minds. It does not mean that workers, or their ideas, are ________ criticism, or that they should complain continuously. In a sense, this method is the ________ of Toyota’s “lean manufacturing” process, which allows any worker who spots a problem to stop the production line.

Pixar, the production firm, created what it called a “Braintrust” to give ________ to film directors. The rules were that advice should be constructive and about the idea, not the person, and that filmmakers should not be ________ in response.

And psychological safety is not about whistleblowing (检举). Indeed, if an employee feels the need to act as a whistleblower by speaking to external ________, it suggests employers have not created an environment within the firm where criticism can be ________. Nor is such a culture only about safety or avoiding mistakes. As mundane (单调的) tasks are automated, and workers rely on computers for data analysis, the added value of humans will stem from their ________. But as Ms. Edmondson’s book demonstrates, it is hard to be either constructive or creative if you are not confident about speaking out.