Boys outscored girls on reading tests — when they were told the tests were a game:
The latest study, in France, involved 80 children, 48 boys and 30 girls age 9 years old on average, from four third-grade classes at three schools. All classes received a silent reading test that required students to underline as many animal names as possible in three minutes from a list of 486 words (animal names comprised half the list). Two classes were told the test was an evaluation of their reading abilities, and two were told it was a new animal fishing game designed for a fun magazine.
In classes given reading evaluations, boys made an average of 33.3 correct answers compared with 43.3 by the girls. But when the tests were framed as animal games, boys’ average scores were significantly higher: 44.7 compared with 38.3 for the girls.
It looks like the boys’ performance improved and the girls’ performance declined when they said it was a game?
See Competitiveness is profoundly sex-differential, consistent with its being biologically based and within-, not between-sex, Moxon SP (2015) New Male Studies 4(2) 39-51: