Ken and Barbie at life size

There has been considerable discussion in both the scientific literature and general media concerning the appropriateness of the body shape and proportions of the Ken and Barbie dolls, the most popular dolls in modern history. The greatest concern has been of the possible influence that these, and other cultural ideals for body shape, may have on young children. However, these concerns have been based entirely on the subjective interpretation of how one perceives the body dimensions of the dolls relative to an adult size. We therefore used our skills in anthropometry and the rules of allometry to scale the dolls to an adult height to determine the dimensions that these dolls would assume at this adjusted size. These were compared to actual proportions of several representative adult groups of predominantly Anglo-Australian males and females. The critics have been justified in their opinions since both Barbie and Ken are thin relative to the reference samples. Barbie's mean girth z-score relative to a reference cross-section of the young adult population was –4.2. This indicates that the probability for such a body shape is less than 1 in 100,000. Ken is more realistic at about 1 in 50.Special thanks to Melissa Clough, Brendon Dews, Loretta Downie, Judy Morris, and Kim Birchall.     

Assessing multiple facets of gender identity: the gender identity questionnaire.

314 men and 451 women participated in a study to assess the reliability and validity of the multifaceted Gender Identity Questionnaire. Reliability coefficients of the (sub)scales varied between .67 and .80; content, criterion, and construct validity were satisfactory.     

Decisions and the evolution of memory: multiple systems, multiple functions

Memory evolved to supply useful, timely information to the organism's decision-making systems. Therefore, decision rules, multiple memory systems, and the search engines that link them should have coevolved to mesh in a coadapted, functionally interlocking way. This adaptationist perspective suggested the scope hypothesis: When a generalization is retrieved from semantic memory, episodic memories that are inconsistent with it should be retrieved in tandem to place boundary conditions on the scope of the generalization. Using a priming paradigm and a decision task involving person memory, the authors tested and confirmed this hypothesis. The results support the view that priming is an evolved adaptation. They further show that dissociations between memory systems are not--and should not be--absolute: Independence exists for some tasks but not others.     

Positive work experiences and life satisfaction: the moderating role of gender

This study investigated the effects of work engagement and psychological meaningfulness on life satisfaction taking into account the moderating effect of gender. A cross-sectional research design was used to capture data on satisfaction with life, work engagement and psychological meaningfulness. The sample consisted of 796 employees from various companies in South Africa (women?=?65.9%; aged between 18 and 67). The results showed work engagement and psychological meaningfulness to significantly predict life satisfaction. A significant interaction effect for gender was found on the relationships between work engagement on life satisfaction and psychological meaningfulness on work engagement respectively. The results indicated that men showed a higher level of life satisfaction when work engagement was high. Women showed lower levels of life satisfaction the more they engage in their work. Women further experienced a higher level of work engagement compared to men; however, the relationship between psychological meaningfulness and work engagement was stronger for men. The more psychological meaningfulness men experience, the more they will engage-unlike women, who tend to experience work engagement irrespective of psychological meaningfulness.     

Perceptions of success and life satisfaction: a gender examination in Taiwan

Gender socialization creates an expectation that men should achieve success (regardless of how it is defined), so men are under greater pressure than women when encountering successful persons and, accordingly, experience lower life satisfaction. Two experiments were conducted in Taiwan to test the proposed effects on life satisfaction. Study 1 showed that 149 students were more likely to infer successful targets as male than female. A path model demonstrated that feeling less powerful against ideal same‐sex persons predicted men's (but not women's) lower life satisfaction after they read about successful targets. Study 2 (106 students) showed that reading about successful targets had differential effects for men and women. Implications regarding culture, gender, and life satisfaction were discussed.     

Fathers and gender traditionalism: perception of inequality and life roles

Men's discourse about the paternal role is changing significantly. Despite the fact that men still perceive themselves as being responsible for the family's economical protection and the children's discipline, they face increasing demands for more involvement in childcare. From this perspective, this work analyzes the traditional view of gender roles and the perception of inequality in a sample of 95 employed fathers, as well as the various levels of satisfaction with other life roles and their relevance as a function of some gender and sociodemographic variables. The results show that men do not maintain a very traditional gender ideology with regard to role distribution and they still consider the paternal role and feelings as the most important thing in their lives. However, the couple relationship gives them the most satisfaction. Level of traditionalism and age were the two significant predicting variables of perception of inequality of men and women.     

Affect and between-meal snacking in daily life: the moderating role of gender and age

Objective: Affect-related energy intake from snacks remains relatively unexplored in daily life. This study examines the associations between momentary positive affect (PA) and momentary negative affect (NA) and subsequent energy intake from snacks. In addition, the moderating role of BMI, gender, age and level of education is investigated.

Design: Adults (N = 269), aged 20–50, participated in this study. Demographics were assessed in an online composite questionnaire. An experience sampling smartphone application was used to map momentary NA/PA and energy intake (kilocalories) from snacks in the context of daily life.

Main outcome measures: Energy intake from moment-to-moment self-reported snacks in real-life settings.

Results: A significant negative main effect of momentary NA on moment-to-moment energy intake was found. The higher the momentary NA, the lower the subsequent amount of kilocalories consumed. There was no main effect with regard to PA. Interaction analyses showed that men decreased their energy intake after experiencing NA, and increased their intake after experiencing PA. No associations were found in women. Additionally, young adults (20–30) increased their energy intake after experiencing PA. No associations were found in the other age groups.

Conclusion: Interventions aiming at reducing energy intake might also address PA-related snacking in young adults and men.     

Evaluative ratings and attention across the life span: emotional arousal and gender

This study was designed to investigate the evolution of emotional processing over the whole adult life span as a function of stimulus arousal and participants’ gender. To this end, self-reported affective evaluation and attentional capture prompted by pleasant and unpleasant pictures varying in arousal were measured in a large sample of participants (n?=?211) balanced by gender and equally spread across seven decades from 20 to 90 years. Results showed age differences only for affective evaluation of pleasant stimuli, with opposite patterns depending on stimulus arousal. As age increased, low-arousing pleasant cues (e.g. images of babies) were experienced as more pleasant and arousing by both males and females, whereas high-arousing stimuli (e.g. erotic images) were experienced as less pleasant only by females. In contrast, emotional pictures (both pleasant and unpleasant) were effective at capturing attention in a similar way across participants, regardless of age and gender. Taken together, these findings suggest that specific emotional cues prompt different subjective responses across different age groups, while basic mechanisms involved in attentional engagement towards both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli are preserved in healthy ageing.     

Pink or blue: Environmental gender stereotypes in the first two years of life

The physical environment of 120 girls and boys was compared in order to study the emergence of gender differences in infancy. Three age groups were investigated, 5, 13, and 25 months, with 40 children in each group. The quantity and types of toys, the colors and types of clothing, and the colors and motifs of the children's room were noted on a checklist by an observer who visited their homes. The results showed that boys were provided with more sports equipment, tools, and large and small vehicles. Girls had more dolls, fictional characters, child's furniture, and other toys for manipulation. They wore pink and multicolored clothes more often, had more pink pacifiers and jewelry. Boys wore more blue, red and white clothing. They had more blue pacifiers. Yellow bedding was more frequently observed in the girls' rooms, while blue bedding and curtains were more prevalent in the boys' rooms. Women were the predominant providers of toys for children. It thus seems that, nowadays, very early in their development, girls and boys already experience environments which are dissimilar. We may hypothesize that these differential environments will have an impact on the development of specific abilities and preferential activities in children.This research was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and FCAR, Québec. We thank France Frenette and Diane Mathurin for their assistance in the collection of data, and Tibie Rome-Flanders for her comments on a first draft of the paper.     

Autobiographical memory: exploring its functions in everyday life

This special issue of Memory spotlights research that uses a functional approach to investigate autobiographical memory (AM) in everyday life. This approach relies on studying cognition, in this case AM, taking into account the psychological, social, or cultural-historic context in which it occurs. Areas of interest include understanding to what ends AM is used by individuals and in social relationships, how it is related to other cognitive abilities and emotional states, and how memory represents our inner and outer world. One insight gained by taking this approach is that levels and types of accuracy need not always be regarded as memory "failures" but are sometimes integral to a self-memory system that serves a variety of meaningful ends of human activity. Previously hypothesised functions of AM fall into three broad domains: self, social, and directive. Each of the contributions addresses how AM serves one or more of these functions and thereby examines the usefulness and adequacy of this trio.     

Lay beliefs about competition: Scale development and gender differences

Motivation and Emotion - Women are less competitive than men in most contexts studied. This difference has been linked to the gender gap in socio-economic outcomes. To examine whether this gender...     

Limb and gender differences in the development of coordination in early infancy

Young infants produce a variety of spontaneous arm and leg movements in the first few months of life. Coordination of leg joints has been extensively investigated, whereas arm joint coordination has mainly been investigated in the sitting position in the context of early reaching and grasping. The current study investigated arm and leg joint coordination of movements produced in the supine position in 10 fullterm infants aged 6, 12 and 18 weeks. Longitudinal comparisons within limbs (intralimb) as well as between limbs (interlimb, ipsilateral and contralateral) were made as well as an exploration of differences in the development for boys and girls. The relationship between the joint angles was examined by measuring pair-wise cross-correlation functions for the angular displacement curves of the leg (hip, knee and ankle) and arm (shoulder, elbow and wrist) joints of both the right and left side. Both the arms and legs were found to follow a similar pattern of intralimb coordination, although the leg joints were more tightly coupled than the arm joints, particularly the proximal with the middle joint. In support of earlier findings, differences in the development of the right and left side were identified. In addition, gender differences in joint coordination were found for both intralimb and interlimb coordination. This contrasts with the view that gender differences in motor development may be primarily a result of environmental influences.     

Social relations and cognitive development: the influence of conversation type and representations of gender

While the productive role of social interaction between peers in promoting cognitive development has been clearly established, the communicative processes through which this is achieved have not been clearly identified. This paper reports a study in which 184 children aged between of 6.5 to 7.5 years were presented with a Piagetian task of conservation of liquid. Both male and female non‐conservers worked with a conserving partner in either same or mixed‐sex dyads, thus creating four different pair types. The pairs were asked to discuss their conflicting answers and agree upon a joint response. Cognitive progress was assessed by pre‐ to post‐test gains. The results indicated that the type of conversation established during the interaction was strongly related to the outcome. The results also indicate that the gender composition of the pairs influenced the type of conversation which occurred and the outcome measures. These results are discussed in relation to the general model of socio‐cognitive conflict, and highlight the role of representations and expectations of gender in the way in which the conflict is expressed and resolved in conditions of aligned or conflicting knowledge and gender asymmetries. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coding processes and executive functions in multiple sclerosis

Although episodic memory deficit in patients with multiple sclerosis (ME) is a well established fact, there is no agreement about the origin of this disorder in terms of cognitive processes. Whereas most of the studies attribute this deficit to defects in memory recovery processes, others contribute evidence in favor of the hypothesis that considers that it originates in difficulties in coding memory processes.However, the analysis of the relationship between coding processes and memory functioning in ME is a scantly studied topic. In the present article, we studied coding processes and their relationships with executive control processes in a group of patients with ME. We used a set of indexes of the Test of Verbal Learning from the TAVEC test for the evaluation of the coding processes. To assess the executive processes we used a semantic verbal fluency task, the WCST, and WAIS III scale of matrixes. We worked with 36 patients with ME diagnosis and 36 healthy control participants, paired by age and educational level. The results showed a deficit in the coding processes and the existence of a significant association between these processes and executive functioning.     

Psychosocial development, self-concept, and gender

Undergraduate students (N = 88; 51 males and 37 females) completed the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS; Fitts, 1965) and the identity versus identity diffusion and intimacy versus isolation scales from Constantinople's (1969) Inventory of Psychosocial Development (IPD). Strong positive correlations were found between ego identity and all aspects of self-concept for both males and females. Different results emerged for the intimacy versus isolation crisis, however. For males, all aspects of self-concept were related to a sense of intimacy, but for females intimacy was related only to the behavioral and interpersonal aspects of self-concept. The implications of these findings are discussed and the contingency of intimacy upon ego identity is questioned with regard to females.