Preschoolers' beliefs about sex and age differences in emotionality

The goal of the present study was to assess preschoolers' beliefs about the frequency and intensity with which boys, girls, women, and men experience anger, sadness, and happiness. Sixty-seven middle-class preschool children (35 girls, 32 boys) were presented with drawings of adult and child figures of each sex, and were asked to rate how frequently and intensely the emotions were felt (91% of the children were white; the remainder were primarily black). Children's gender stereotyped beliefs were particularly strong for sadness and appeared to be based on a deficit-experience model for males. Sex of target differences also were found for children's beliefs about anger (favoring males). However, the sex difference in anger was based more on the degree to which anger is believed to be experienced rather than on differences in beliefs regarding males' and females' capacity to experience anger. Age of target differences were also found for sadness and anger, but not for happiness. It was concluded that preschoolers' beliefs about differences in emotions are complex, and vary as a function of the sex and age of the target person, and as a function of the specific emotion.Partial support for Richard Fabes was provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BNS-8807784). Partial support for Carol Martin was provided by a Women's Studies Research Award (CM1-1001) and a Faculty Grant in Aid (RWR-B658) from Arizona State University. The authors would like to thank Anita Petitti, Dennis Barrett, Amy Vogelson, Melinda Deacon, Kris Hughes, Amy Secklin, Hilary Rose, Melanie Smith, and Melinda Smith for their assistance with data collection and stimulus preparation. Thanks also goes to the teachers, staff, and children at the Arizona State University Child Laboratory Programs.     

The influence of age, sex, and specialized training on the vertical-horizontal illusion

With the aim of investigating the perceptual processes responsible for perceptual illusions, we have studied the influence of age, sex and specialized training on two forms of the vertical-horizontal illusion. In Figure A, the vertical is a short distance away from the horizontal; in Figure B, the vertical meets the horizontal segment at its mid-point. Both figures were presented in brief (0-2 second) and long (I-o second) tachistoscopic exposure, and in unlimited exposure.

When time is unlimited. Illusion A increases up to 9-10 years and then remains constant and Illusion B decreases as a function of age and chiefly as a function of the degree of scientific training. The illusions are stronger in tachistoscopic perception than under conditions of umlimited exposure. Both illusions also increase in tachistoscopic perception with age except for science students. Under condition of unlimited time, women have stronger illusions than men. This difference does not occur in tachistoscopic perception.

These results may be interpreted in terms of the interaction of three processes: interaction among the elements of a figure (field effects); perceptual activity which makes possible the passing from syncretism or multiplicity to organized perception; and the activity of measuring the elements relatively to each other. This latter activity develops with cultural level and especially with scientific training. It is more effective with men than with women, due, it is suggested, to the spatial factor being higher in men.     

Children's perception of parental exercise: influence of sex and age

The purpose of the study was to document children's perception of parental exercise, relating these perceptions to (1) the self-reported parents' habits of exercise, and (2) the children's own activity patterns. The subjects were 198 students of both sexes, aged 12 to 14 yr. and enrolled in school Grades 7 to 9. A standard questionnaire assessed their perceptions of parental and personal physical activity. Both parents of each subject also reported their respective levels of habitual physical activity. Congruence between the children's perceptions and the self-reported exercise habits of the opposite-sex parent differed for boys and girls, increasing for boys and decreasing for girls between Grades 7 and 9. No significant associations were observed between the children's perception of parental exercise patterns and their own like habits. This suggests that during adolescence parental influences are minimized by other factors, personal or environmental.     

Dominance and sex differences in nonverbal responses to differential eye contact

Sixteen male and 16 female subjects were divided into high- and low-dominant groups and assigned to one of two cohorts who either avoided eye contact or maintained a steady gaze. Starting 100 in. apart, subjects were asked to approach the cohort to the point where they felt most comfortable. Dependent measures were personal space, approach rate, reciprocal eye contact, and attitude toward cohort. It was found that high-dominant subjects showed increased proxemic behavior in responding to a direct gaze, while low-dominant subjects showed a decrease. Also men tend to use personal space and approach rate to signal dominance, while women use reciprocal eye contact. Finally, an exception was found to previous findings that positive attitudes are associated with high levels of eye contact. Low-dominant males, but no other groups, respond to direct gaze with a more negative attitude.     

The development of fine-grained sensitivity to eye contact after 6 years of age

Adults use eye contact as a cue to the mental and emotional states of others. Here, we examined developmental changes in the ability to discriminate between eye contact and averted gaze. Children (6-, 8-, 10-, and 14-year-olds) and adults (n=18/age) viewed photographs of a model fixating the center of a camera lens and a series of positions to the left/right or upward/downward and judged whether the model's gaze was direct or averted to the left/right or upward/downward. The horizontal range of fixation positions leading to the perception of direct gaze (the cone of gaze) was more than 50% larger in 6-year-olds than in adults, but it was adult-like and smaller than the vertical cone of gaze by 8 years of age. The vertical cone of gaze was large and statistically adult-like by age 6, with only a small linear reduction thereafter. In all age groups, the horizontal cone of gaze was centered on the bridge of the participant's nose and the vertical cone was centered slightly below the participant's eye height. These findings indicate that until after age 6, relatively poor sensitivity to direct versus averted gaze limits children's ability to use gaze cues to make social judgments.     

Effects of leader sex,subordinate sex,and subordinate performance on the use of influence strategies

The study examined the effects of leader sex, subordinate sex, and subordinate performance on leaders' use of influence strategies. Forty-two male and 42 female engineering undergraduates participated in role-playing situations. Relative to females, males reported a greater likelihood of using such influence strategies as negative sanction, assertiveness, reward, and exchange. In general, subjects tended to employ more of negative sanction and assertiveness and less of reward and exchange when dealing with poorly performing subordinates than with well-performing subordinates. While the subordinate sex had little impact, few interactions were noted. Implications of these findings both for those in leadership roles and for future research are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Australian Bicentennial Meeting of Social Psychologists at Leura Bluemountains, Australia, August 1988. I thank Managal Dev, S. Pal, A. K. Tripathi, and Sanjay Tripathi for their help in collecting the data. I also extend my gratitude to an anonymous reviewer, and to Bijoy Boruah and Kanika Tandon for helpful comments.     

The perception of eye contact

Ss made judgments of whether or not they were being looked in the eye as an E fixated several points on and off their faces.Distance between sender and receiver, sex, and whether the sender made a sequence of fixation sprior to the terminal fixation were variables of interest. The sender-receiver distance produced less effect than predicted from the hypothesis that receiver judgments were determined solely by the discrepancy between the sender’s iris/sclera configuration (ISC) during true eye contact and the current fixation point. There was no stable differencein accuracy as a function of whether the sender’s terminal fixation was preceded by other fixations or not. These findings cast doubt on the belief expressed in recent studies that the ISC can be used to accurately discriminate eye gazes from other gazes. The results also suggest that fixations on some portions of the face yield a judgment of eye contact which might be predicted on the basis of social experience.     

The Stroop color-word test: influence of age, sex, and education; and normative data for a large sample across the adult age range

The Stroop Color-Word Test was administered to 1,856 cognitively screened, healthy Dutch speaking participants aged 24 to 81 years. The effects of age, gender, and education on Stroop test performance were investigated to adequately stratify the normative data. The results showed that especially the speed-dependent Stroop scores (time to complete a subtest), rather than the accuracy measures (the errors made per Stroop sub-task), were profoundly affected by the demographic variables. In addition to the main effects of the demographic variables, an Age Low Level of Education interaction was found for the Error III and the Stroop Interference scores. This suggests that executive function, as measured by the Stroop test, declines with age and that the decline is more pronounced in people with a low level of education. This is consistent with the reserve hypothesis of brain aging (i.e., that education generates reserve capacity against the damaging effects of aging on brain functions). Normative Stroop data were established using both a regression-based and traditional approach, and the appropriateness of both methods for generating normative data is discussed.     

The perils of learning to move while speaking: One-sided interference between speech and visuomotor adaptation

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Our understanding of the adaptive processes that shape sensorimotor behavior is largely derived from studying isolated movements. Studies of visuomotor...     

Reading the road: The influence of age and sex on child pedestrians' perceptions of road risk

The United Kingdom has one of the highest records of child pedestrian accidents in the European Union, and statistics show boys are particularly vulnerable. This study investigated whether there were identifiable developmental or sex differences in the perception of road risk, which might explain the occurrence of such child pedestrian accidents. The study was a between‐participants experimental design with three independent variables: age, sex and task. The sample comprised 119 school children in three age groups (7–8 years; 9–10 years and 11–12 years) with equal sex distribution in each age group. All children, tested individually, completed two sorting tasks. The tasks differed in that children first classified 20 photographs of road scenes on self‐selected criteria (free sort) and then reclassified the scenes on the basis of safety of each scene (cued sort). When children operated a free sort, age differences were apparent in both the number and type of categories produced. However, this age variation was not apparent for the cued sort showing that the younger children were strongly influenced by cueing. Younger children exhibited a more personal and idiosyncratic perspective of the road compared to older children, who were able to view the road from global perspectives. Sex differences in assessing safety were limited but interesting, demonstrating that the males focussed on physical attributes of the scene and females on the actors within the scene. The focus of females on the dynamic attributes of the scene may be a partial explanation of their greater safety record compared to their male peers.     

Preschoolers' use of dynamic facial, bodily, and vocal cues to emotion

In daily experience, children have access to a variety of cues to others’ emotions, including face, voice, and body posture. Determining which cues they use at which ages will help to reveal how the ability to recognize emotions develops. For happiness, sadness, anger, and fear, preschoolers (3-5 years, N = 144) were asked to label the emotion conveyed by dynamic cues in four cue conditions. The Face-only, Body Posture-only, and Multi-cue (face, body, and voice) conditions all were well recognized (M > 70%). In the Voice-only condition, recognition of sadness was high (72%), but recognition of the three other emotions was significantly lower (34%).     

Pupil dilation, sex of stimulus, and age and sex of observer

10-yr.-old, 16-yr.-old, and 20-yr.-old male and female observers (ns = 10; N = 60) rated a number of male and female faces for how 'good-looking' they were. Some of these faces were identical save that in one version the pupils were larger. Pupil dilation in the photographs of males produced no significant effects, whereas pupil dilation in the female photographs caused such faces to be rated as more good-looking by the two oldest groups of male observers. The 10-yr.-old boys and the 16- and 20-yr.-old women rated the female faces with enlarged pupils as significantly less 'good-looking' than the same faces with smaller pupils.     

Risk and protective factors in adolescents' drug use, and differences by age and sex

Adolescents' drug use has huge social and personal implications, so it is essential to identify risk and protective factors. In this research, the CTCYS was used with 2440 adolescents to detect risk and protective factors for drug use in the community, family, school and peers/individual; differences in risk and protective factors by age and sex; and relationships between risk and protective factors and substance use. Protective factors are high. Risk factors are high in the community, the school and the individual. Older adolescents have more risks and less protection than the youngest; and there are sex differences, because males have less protection and more risks. The risk factors more closely related to drug use are availability of drugs in the community, family attitudes favourable to drug use, family history of antisocial behaviour, early start and use of drugs by friends, perceived risk and attitudes favourable to drug use. In the protective factors, the role played by social skills for alcohol use is important.     

Adults' vocational mobility intentions: The roles of age, sex and labour-market position

The demand for vocational guidance by adults has been shown to be negatively related to occupational commitment. Thus in coming to understand the causes of occupational commitment, we are simultaneously able to form an appreciation of a major source of demand for vocational guidance. Three possible predictors are examined: age, sex and labour-market position. Of these, labour-market position is the best predictor. The implications for guidance are outlined.     

Hand, eye, and head coordination while pointing to perturbed targets

Normal human subjects were required to manually point to small visual targets that suddenly changed location upon finger movement initiation. They pointed either as fast or as accurately as possible. Movements of the eyes were measured by electrooculography, and the movements of the unrestrained limb and head were monitored by an optoelectric system (WATSMART), which allowed for the analysis of kinematic parameters in three-dimensional space. The temporal and kinematic reorganization of each body part in response to the target perturbations were variable, which indicated independent control for each part of the system. That is, the timing and nature of the reorganization varied for each body part. In addition, the pattern of reorganization depended upon the speed and accuracy demands of the movement task. As well, the movement termination patterns (eyes finished first, the finger reached the target, then the head stopped moving) were extremely consistent, indicating that movement termination may be a controlled variable. Finally, no evidence was found to suggest that visual information was used to amend arm movements early (before peak velocity) in the trajectory.     

Effects of communication skills on stress responses while speaking Japanese and English

The present study was conducted to examine the effects of communication skills on stress responses, such as physiological (blink and heart rate), emotional (state of anxiety and mood), and behavioral responses (smiling and expressing an opinion) in stressful communication situations, specifically answering questions and giving a speech in Japanese and English. Participants were 32 students (16 men and 16 women; Mage = 19.5 yr., SD = 1.3) attending a Japanese university. A high communication skills group was selected from the upper tertile scores of the Social Skills Inventory, and a low communication skills group was selected from the lower tertile scores. Analysis indicated that individuals who had high communication skills performed without heart-rate increase and with more positive attitude during stressful communication tasks. Individuals who had low communication skills displayed higher anxiety prior to the experiment than those who had high communication skills.