Sex differences in symbol-digit substitution task performance

Estes (1974) proposed that the superior performance of women over men on the Digit-Symbol Substitution subtest of the Wechsler scales was due to their greater ability to encode symbols verbally. Three forms of a symbol-digit substitution task were administered to 62 female and 96 male college students. The symbol sets of the three forms differed in the relative amount of figural and spatial orientational information. Women performed better than men on the form which used the Wechsler symbol set in which all symbols are figurally different and, presumably, most easily coded verbally. Men performed better than women on the form which had the greatest amount of spatial orientational information. Estes' hypothesis is supported by these findings.     

Is it dangerous? The role of an emotional visual search strategy and threat-relevant training in the detection of guns and knives

Counter-terrorism strategies rely on the assumption that it is possible to increase threat detection by providing explicit verbal instructions to orient people's attention to dangerous objects and hostile behaviours in their environment. Nevertheless, whether verbal cues can be used to enhance threat detection performance under laboratory conditions is currently unclear. In Experiment 1, student participants were required to detect a picture of a dangerous or neutral object embedded within a visual search display on the basis of an emotional strategy ‘is it dangerous?’ or a semantic strategy ‘is it an object?’. The results showed a threat superiority effect that was enhanced by the emotional visual search strategy. In Experiment 2, whilst trainee police officers displayed a greater threat superiority effect than student controls, both groups benefitted from performing the task under the emotional than semantic visual search strategy. Manipulating situational threat levels (high vs. low) in the experimental instructions had no effect on visual search performance. The current findings provide new support for the language-as-context hypothesis. They are also consistent with a dual-processing account of threat detection involving a verbally mediated route in working memory and the deployment of a visual template developed as a function of training.     

Memory for modality of presentation: Within-modality discrimination

Two experiments demonstrated that Ss are capable of making within-modality memory discriminations in both visual and auditory modalities. In Experiment I Ss studied mixed lists of pictures and labels representing common objects and were subsequently required to judge whether the original presentation was pictorial or verbal The high level of performance achieved on this task was unaffected by degree of categorical relatedness of items within method of presentation or by instructions to produce visual images when items were presented verbally. In Experiment II Ss demonstrated the ability to remember whether a sentence was originally presented by a male or a female speaker. Some strategies by which within-modality discrimination in memory might be accomplished are discussed.     

Memory of self-performed tasks: Self-performing during recognition

Two experiments focused on whether performing actions described by to-be-remembered phrases during recognition enhances recognition compared with results of a standard verbal recognition test. The enhancement was predicted when the actions described by the phrases had been performed during study, but not when the phrases were verbally encoded by simply listening to and memorizing the material. Both experiments showed that enactment prior to recognition improved memory performance, but only when subjects had encoded by enactment. Experiment 1 also demonstrated that this test-procedure effect was independent of a bizarreness effect, which was observed only with the verbal encoding task. Experiment 2 showed that the effect of enactment during recognition was reduced when subjects used different hands for performing the actions during study and recognition- The findings support the assumption that some kind of motor memory record underlies the enactment effect that occurs when actions are performed during recognition.     

Laterality effects, levels of processing, and stimulus properties

Two hypotheses of hemispheric specialization are discussed. The first stresses the importance of the kind of processing to which the stimulus is subjected, and the second stresses the importance of the nature of the stimulus. To test these hypotheses, four experiments were carried out. In Experiment 1 verbal material was employed in a same-different classification task, and an overall right visual field superiority was found. Experiment 2, in which verbal stimuli were subjected to visuospatial transformations (i.e. mental rotations), yielded no laterality effect. In Experiment 3 geometrical figures were employed in a classification task similar to that of Experiment 1, and an overall left visual field superiority was found. In Experiment 4 both verbal and geometric stimuli were employed. The results showed a significant interaction between field of presentation and nature of the stimulus and no interaction between field of presentation and level of processing.     

Making the Past Present: Later Verbal Accessibility of Early Memories

A major question in the literature regarding memory development is whether memories of events from early in life are later accessible to verbal report. In a controlled study, we examined this question in toddlers who were 13, 16, or 20 months old at the time of exposure to specific events, and who were evaluated for spontaneous verbal expression of memory after delays of 9 to 12 months (Experiment 1), or 1 to 3 months (Experiment 2). Verbal reports of the events were elicited at the age of 3 years (both experiments). There was little evidence of spontaneous verbal mnemonic expression at the first delayed-recall test; the mnemonic expression that was observed was predicted by concurrent age and concurrent verbal fluency. Children who had been 20 months at the time of first experience of the events, and who were older and more verbally fluent at the first delayed-recall test (i.e., 20-month-olds in Experiment 1), provided verbal evidence of event memory at 3 years. The results are consistent with the suggestion that under some circumstances, early memories later are accessible to verbal report.     

In-group ratings are affected by who asks and how: interactive effects of experimenter group-membership and response format

In three experiments, participants rated how well a number of adjectives described their in-group (e.g. kind-hearted, helpful, intelligent, efficient, etc.). In Experiment 1, females were found to rate their ingroup (females) more favorably when reporting verbally to female (rather than male) experimenters. This finding was further explored in two subsequent experiments where response format (written vs. verbal) was also manipulated. Both experiments revealed an interaction such that ethnic Swedes rated their in-group (Swedes) the most favorably when reporting verbally to an in-group experimenter and the least favorably when reporting verbally to a Middle Eastern experimenter. Results are discussed in relation to correction and contextual activation of social norms.     

REDUCING BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS THROUGH FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING

It is generally agreed that serious misbehavior in children should be replaced with socially appropriate behaviors, but few guidelines exist with respect to choosing replacement behaviors. We address this issue in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we developed an assessment method for identifying situations in which behavior problems, including aggression, tantrums, and self-injury, were most likely to occur. Results demonstrated that both low level of adult attention and high level of task difficulty were discriminative for misbehavior. In Experiment 2, the assessment data were used to select replacements for misbehavior. Specifically, children were taught to solicit attention or assistance or both verbally from adults. This treatment, which involvedthe differential reinforcement of functional communication, produced replicable suppression of behavior problems across four developmentally disabled children. The results were consistent with an hypothesis stating that some child behavior problems may be viewed as a nonverbal means of communication. According to this hypothesis, behavior problems and verbal communicative acts, though differing in form, may be equivalent in function. Therefore, strengtheningthe latter should weakenthe former.     

Incidental retention of speaker’s voice

Geiselman and Bellezza (1976) concluded that any retention in memory of the sex of a speaker of verbal material is automatic. Two possible reasons for this were hypothesized: the voice-connotation hypothesis and the dual-hemisphere parallel-processing hypothesis. In Experiment 1, the to-be-remembered sentences contained either male or female agents. Incidental retention of sex of speaker did not occur. This result does not support the dual-hemisphere parallel-processing hypothesis, which indicates that retention of voice should be independent of sentence content. In Experiment 2, the sentences contained neutral agents and incidental retention of sex of speaker did occur. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 support the connotation hypothesis. The different results with regard to incidental retention of speakers’s voice found in Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated in Experiment 3 using a within-subjects design. Experimemt 4 was conducted to determine if a speaker’s voice does, in fact, influence the meaning of a neutral sentence. In agreement with the voice-connotation hypothesis, sentences spoken by a male were rated as having more “potent” connotations than sentences spoken by a female.     

A study of the dynamics of sex differences in adulthood

Studies of gender differences using primarily young individuals show that males, on average, perform better than females in physical activities but worse than females on tests of verbal abilities. There is however a controversy about the existence of these sex differences in adulthood. Our study used 1271 participants from four cultural backgrounds (Chinese, multi‐generation Canadians, Indu‐Canadians, and European‐Canadians) divided in five age groups. We measured sex differences in the time required for participants to complete a lexical task experiment, and also assessed their verbal tempo and physical endurance using a validated temperament test (Structure of Temperament Questionnaire). We found a significant female advantage in time on the lexical task and on the temperament scale of social–verbal tempo, and a male advantage on the temperament scale of physical endurance. These sex differences, however, were more pronounced in young age groups (17–24), fading in older groups. This “middle age–middle sex” phenomenon suggests that sex differences in these two types of abilities observed in younger groups might be “a matter of age,” and should not be attributed to gender in general. A one‐dimensional approach to sex differences (common in meta‐analytic studies) therefore overlooks a possible interaction of sex differences with age.     

Altering the balance of recollection and familiarity influences the revelation effect

The revelation effect occurs when recognition test probes are more likely to be called "old" if they are preceded by a verbal processing task. Two experiments examined the role of familiarity and recollection in producing this effect. Each experiment tested the hypothesis that decreasing recollection would heighten the magnitude of the revelation effect. In Experiment 1, the revelation effect increased by delaying the recognition test. In Experiment 2, the revelation effect increased when the presentation rate of the study words was reduced. These results are discussed in terms of the variables that produce the revelation effect in episodic and nonepisodic memory judgments.     

Verbal overshadowing of visual memories: some things are better left unsaid

It is widely believed that verbal processing generally improves memory performance. However, in a series of six experiments, verbalizing the appearance of previously seen visual stimuli impaired subsequent recognition performance. In Experiment 1, subjects viewed a videotape including a salient individual. Later, some subjects described the individual's face. Subjects who verbalized the face performed less well on a subsequent recognition test than control subjects who did not engage in memory verbalization. The results of Experiment 2 replicated those of Experiment 1 and further clarified the effect of memory verbalization by demonstrating that visualization does not impair face recognition. In Experiments 3 and 4 we explored the hypothesis that memory verbalization impairs memory for stimuli that are difficult to put into words. In Experiment 3 memory impairment followed the verbalization of a different visual stimulus: color. In Experiment 4 marginal memory improvement followed the verbalization of a verbal stimulus: a brief spoken statement. In Experiments 5 and 6 the source of verbally induced memory impairment was explored. The results of Experiment 5 suggested that the impairment does not reflect a temporary verbal set, but rather indicates relatively long-lasting memory interference. Finally, Experiment 6 demonstrated that limiting subjects' time to make recognition decisions alleviates the impairment, suggesting that memory verbalization overshadows but does not eradicate the original visual memory. This collection of results is consistent with a recording interference hypothesis: verbalizing a visual memory may produce a verbally biased memory representation that can interfere with the application of the original visual memory.     

Sex differences in symbol-digit substitution and speeded matching

Sex differences in digit-symbol substitution and speeded matching tests have not been adequately explained. Recent attempts have suggested the importance of the comparison processes, associative memory, and a possible difference in processing verbal and spatial information. Four experiments, two on speeded matching and two on symbol-digit substitution, supported the hypothesis that both tests involve comparison processes and that the sex difference in these processes depends upon the type of information. A female advantage is clearest with verbal material on both matching and symbol-digit substitution tasks. A male advantage was found on a symbol-digit substitution test only after training on the symbol-digit associations and when symbol discrimination involved spatial orientation. These results question previous interpretations of the clerical speed and symbol-digit substitution tests in terms of perceptual encoding speed, attentional shifts or sex differences in motor skills.     

An evaluation of evidence for innate sex differences in linguistic ability

A female superiority in verbal ability is reported on many tests. It has been hypothesized that the female brain is more functionally symmetrical for language then the male, and that this is the cause of the alleged superiority. Recent research has suggested that factors other than sex are involved: handedness, age of maturity, and endocrine influences. It is not yet clear whether, despite its biological correlates, the female superiortiy is innate.     

Verbal recoding of visual stimuli impairs mentalimagetransformations

Two experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that verbal recoding of visual stimuli in short-term memory influences long-term memory encoding and impairs subsequent mental image operations. Easy and difficult-to-name stimuli were used. When rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, each stimulus revealed a new pattern consisting of two capital letters joined together. In both experiments, subjects first learned a short series of stimuli and were then asked to rotate mental images of the stimuli in order to detect the hidden letters. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression was used to prevent subjects from subvocal rehearsal when learning the stimuli, whereas in Experiment 2, verbal labels were presented with each stimulus during learning to encourage a reliance on the verbal code. As predicted, performance in the imagery task was significantly improved by suppression when the stimuli were easy to name (Experiment 1) but was severely disrupted by labeling when the stimuli were difficult to name (Experiment 2). We concluded that verbal recoding of stimuli in short-term memory during learning disrupts the ability to generate veridical mental images from long-term memory.     

The facilitating effect of verbalization on the recognition memory of incidentally learned faces

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that requiring people to verbally describe a target face from memory facilitates their subsequent recognition when their memory for the target is poor and interferes with recognition when such memory is strong. In Experiment 1, a target face was presented to participants for 30 s or 100 s under a nominal task instruction, and they incidentally familiarized themselves with it. Verbalization increased the rate of correct recognition only when the target was presented for 30 s and the performance of control participants was poor. In Experiment 2, participants observed a target without instruction for intentional learning or other nominal instruction, in a more ecologically valid context. Recognition performance was poor for control participants and verbalization increased the rate of correct recognition. These results appear to support the hypothesis. The implications for the identification of persons by eyewitnesses are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reliance on visual and verbal information across ontological kinds: What do children know about animals and machines?

In two experiments, we systematically examined the reliance on visual (external shape and features) and verbal (origins and internal structure) information in isolation, and together in the identification of animals and machines by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, and adults. Experiment 1 examined the use of visual and verbal information independently in a visual classification task, a verbal classification task, and an induction task. Experiment 2 examined the relative weighting of visual and verbal information in an induction task and a categorization task. The three most important findings from Experiment 1 were that (a) children and adults can use either visual or verbal information to distinguish animals from machines; (b) all age groups classified items with mixed visual information as machines, a tendency that increased with age; and (c) with age, children became increasingly able to induce non-obvious properties, especially the non-obvious properties of machines. The findings from Experiment 2 indicate that the youngest and oldest participants relied on both visual and verbal information in the identification of animals and machines in categorization and induction tasks. Five-year-olds, however, relied only on visual information. As in Experiment 1, we observed a tendency to judge items with contrasting information as machines, suggesting that individuals utilize a more strict definition (both visually and verbally) for the category of animals. We discuss the implication of these results with respect to developmental differences in the use of perceptual and conceptual information across the ontological distinction between artifacts and natural kinds.     

A male advantage for spatial and object but not verbal working memory using the n-back task

Sex-related differences have been reported for performance and neural substrates on some working memory measures that carry a high cognitive load, including the popular n-back neuroimaging paradigm. Despite some evidence of a sex effect on the task, the influence of sex on performance represents a potential confound in neuroimaging research. The present study investigated sex-related differences in verbal, spatial, and common object versions of the high cognitive load "n-back" working memory task. Eighteen male and 18 female undergraduates completed all 3 versions of the task. A mixed ANOVA, with Sex (male and female) as the between-subjects factor and Condition (verbal, spatial, and object) as the within-subjects repeated measure revealed that males were significantly more accurate than females on the spatial and object versions of the n-back task and performed equivalently to females on the verbal version of the task. Although the expected female advantage for verbal working memory was not found using this effortful n-back task, these results support a male advantage for high cognitive load spatial and object working memory. Future research should take into account the influence of sex on performance of the n-back task, and examine sex-related differences in working memory using other paradigms.     

Lateral differences in tachistoscopic recognition of bilaterally presented verbal material.

When subjects have to report verbal material presented tachistoscopically simultaneously on both sides of a fixation point, right visual field superiority has been obtained in several experiments using a central task technique, i.e. where a stimulus presented at the fixation point had to be identified before reporting the rest of the material. Without a central task, left visual field superiority has generally been obtained. It has been suggested to attribute the difference to control of eye fixation by the central task. An alternative interpretation, that the central task modifies the order of attentional scanning was put to the test in Experiment I. With two normally printed words, right visual field superiority was obtained with a central task and left visual field superiority without it. It was predicted that with mirrored words, the opposite pattern would be obtained, yet here right visual field superiority was obtained both without and with a central task. Experiment II shows that the latter result is nevertheless dependent on scanning order, for it can be completely inverted through recall order instructions. It is concluded that lateral differences observed with bilateral presentation cannot be explained without taking account of optional processing priorities, but that the factors on which the latter depend are not yet fully understood.