Identifying Representational Competence With Multi-Representational Displays

Increasingly, multi-representational educational technologies are being deployed in science classrooms to support science learning and the development of representational competence. Several studies have indicated that students experience significant challenges working with these multi-representational displays and prefer to use only one representation while problem solving. Here, we examine the use of one such display, a multi-representational molecular mechanics animation, by organic chemistry undergraduates in a problem-solving interview. Using both protocol analysis and eye fixation data, our analysis indicates that students rely mainly on two visual–spatial representations in the display and do not make use of two accompanying mathematical representations. Moreover, we explore how eye fixation data complement verbal protocols by providing information about how students allocate their attention to different locations of a multi-representational display with and without concurrent verbal utterances. Our analysis indicates that verbal protocols and eye movement data are highly correlated, suggesting that eye fixations and verbalizations reflect similar cognitive processes in such studies.     

Representational Translation With Concrete Models in Organic Chemistry

In representation-rich domains such as organic chemistry, students must be facile and accurate when translating between different 2D representations, such as diagrams. We hypothesized that translating between organic chemistry diagrams would be more accurate when concrete models were used because difficult mental processes could be augmented by external actions on the models. In three studies, the task was to translate between different diagrams of molecules with or without a model. The model groups outperformed control groups, and students who received and used models outperformed those who received but did not use models. Uses of the model suggested that participants were performing external actions to support or replace difficult mental spatial processes. Spatial ability was a much weaker predictor of performance than model use. Results suggest that concrete molecular models can be an effective learning tool but some students need direct instruction to be able to take advantage of models.     

Prevalence and Characteristics of Patients with Suspected Inherited Renal Cell Cancer: Application of the ACMG/NSGC Genetic Referral Guidelines to Patient Cohorts

Patients with suspected hereditary renal cell cancer (RCC) are under-referred for genetic evaluation. Characterizing the prevalence and characteristics of suspected inherited RCC is a crucial step toward advancing personalized, genetically-based cancer risk management for patients and their families. To evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of suspected inherited RCC syndromes based on consensus criteria, we performed a cross-sectional analysis of patients with a diagnosis of RCC in SEER (2001–2011, n = 105,754) and in our institutional cancer registry (2004–2013, n = 998). Consensus criteria for referral of patients with RCC for genetic evaluation from the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and National Society of Genetic Counselors (ACMG/NSGC) were applied to the two cohorts. The associations between meeting referral criteria with demographic characteristics were assessed with chi-square tests. Overall, 24.0 % of the SEER cohort and 33.7 % of our institutional cohort met ACMG/NSGC referral criteria for genetic counseling. While white patients more commonly met early onset clear cell RCC criteria, black patients met papillary RCC criteria at twice the rate of whites in both cohorts (p < 0.0001). As many as 1 in 5 individuals with RCC meet referral criteria for genetic evaluation based on newly emerging guidelines, with differences in pathology noted by race. Prospective genetic testing studies utilizing emerging referral guidelines should help to refine the genetic spectrum of inherited kidney cancer. This study supports efforts to increase awareness of referral of patients with RCC for genetic counseling particularly among urologic providers.     

Learning a spatial skill for surgery: how the contributions of abilities change with practice

We examined changes in performance as people learned to use an angled laparoscope, a challenging spatial skill that must be mastered by surgeons who perform minimally invasive techniques. In Experiment 1, novices took tests of spatial and general reasoning ability, and then learned to operate an angled laparoscope, simulated in a virtual environment, over 12 learning sessions. Initial performance showed considerable variability among learners, with performance related to general and spatial abilities. As learning progressed, interindividual variability diminished and all learners attained proficiency; the correlation with general ability diminished but the correlation with spatial ability remained significant. In Experiment 2, performance by highly experienced surgeons on the simulation was excellent from the first session, confirming its ecological validity. The findings contribute to theories of skill acquisition. They also have practical implications for the selection of surgeons and for the potential use of virtual environments in surgical training. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stigma as framed on YouTube: Effects of personal experiences videos on students’ beliefs about medicalizing intersex

People with physical intersex characteristics can be subject to medical interventions that risk human rights to bodily integrity and self‐determination. Proponents and opponents of medicalization use personal narrative videos on YouTube to frame intersex as a stigma best understood through a medical or social identity frame. Ninety‐nine psychology students watched one of two YouTube videos with either a medical or social identity frame, or participated in a comparison group who watched no video. Participants extracted the videos’ medical or social identity framing in their own words. The social identity video increased participants’ sense that medicine was more harmful and less beneficial, and the medical video decreased participants’ sense that medicine was harmful. Although the videos aimed at bringing about social understanding of intersex people, neither video impacted stigmatizing beliefs about intersex people as a group. Rather, effects of the videos on beliefs about harms of medicalization were moderated by two stigma measures; social distance and gender binary beliefs. Medical intervention on intersex has been justified, in part, on grounds that stigma is inevitable. While intersex stigma has rarely been empirically examined, the present study shows that people with less propensity to stigmatize see less benefit from medicalizing intersex traits and are more open to learning few framings from personal experience videos.     

The political psychology of reproductive strategies

We argue that several reproductive strategies that parental investment theory suggests are adaptive for men and for women are in fact most adaptive for individuals able and willing to use power in dominance relationships. We tested whether people's support for social dominance mediates their willingness to use these reproductive strategies. We hypothesized that the strategies of multiple simultaneous mating, resistance to caring for children as one's own, and sexual jealousy will be appealing especially to men who approve of social dominance, and that finding a high-status, high-earning mate will appeal especially to women who approve of social dominance. Support for the hypotheses using multiple samples and multiple measures was found, and theoretical issues are discussed.     

Sex differences in navigation strategy and efficiency

Research on human navigation has indicated that males and females differ in self-reported navigation strategy as well as objective measures of navigation efficiency. In two experiments, we investigated sex differences in navigation strategy and efficiency using an objective measure of strategy, the dual-solution paradigm (DSP; Marchette, Bakker, & Shelton, 2011). Although navigation by shortcuts and learned routes were the primary strategies used in both experiments, as in previous research on the DSP, individuals also utilized route reversals and sometimes found the goal location as a result of wandering. Importantly, sex differences were found in measures of both route selection and navigation efficiency. In particular, males were more likely to take shortcuts and reached their goal location faster than females, while females were more likely to follow learned routes and wander. Self-report measures of strategy were only weakly correlated with objective measures of strategy, casting doubt on their usefulness. This research indicates that the sex difference in navigation efficiency is large, and only partially related to an individual’s navigation strategy as measured by the dual-solution paradigm.     

Impetus beliefs as default heuristics: Dissociation between explicit and implicit knowledge about motion

We examined the extent to which findings from the literature on naive physics and representational momentum studies are consistent with impetus beliefs postulating imparted internal energy as a source of motion. In a literature review, we showed that, for situations in which impetus theory and physical principles make different predictions, representational momentum effects are consistent with impetus beliefs. In three new experiments, we examined people’s implicit and explicit knowledge of the effect of mass on the rate of ascending motion. The results suggest that implicit knowledge is consistent with impetus theory and is unaffected by explicit knowledge. Expert physicists, whose explicit knowledge is in accord with Newtonian principles, exhibited the same implicit impetus beliefs as novices when asked to respond in a representational momentum paradigm. We propose that, in situations in which an immediate response is required and one does not have specific contextual knowledge about an object’s motion, both physics experts and novices apply impetus principles as a default heuristic.     

From genius inverts to gendered intelligence: Lewis Terman and the power of the norm

The histories of "intelligence" and "sexuality" have largely been narrated separately. In Lewis Terman's work on individual differences, they intersect. Influenced by G. Stanley Hall, Terman initially described atypically accelerated development as problematic. Borrowing from Galton, Terman later positioned gifted children as nonaverage but ideal. Attention to the gifted effeminate subjects used to exemplify giftedness and gender nonconformity in Terman's work shows the selective instantiation of nonaverageness as pathological a propos of effeminacy, and as ideal a propos of high intelligence. Throughout, high intelligence is conflated with health, masculinity, and heterosexuality. Terman's research located marital sexual problems in women's bodies, further undoing possibilities for evaluating heterosexual men's practices as different from a normative position. Terman's research modernized Galton's imperialist vision of a society lead by a male cognitive elite. Psychologists continue to traffic in his logic that values and inculcates intelligence only in the service of sexual and gender conformity.     

“Lights on at the end of the party”: Are lads’ mags mainstreaming dangerous sexism?

Research has suggested that some magazines targeted at young men –lads’ mags– are normalizing extreme sexist views by presenting those views in a mainstream context. Consistent with this view, young men in Study 1 (n = 90) identified more with derogatory quotes about women drawn from recent lads’ mags, and from interviews with convicted rapists, when those quotes were attributed to lads’ mags, than when they were attributed to convicted rapists. In Study 2, 40 young women and men could not reliably judge the source of those same quotes. While these participants sometimes voiced the belief that the content of lads’ mags was ‘normal’ while rapists’ talk was ‘extreme’, they categorized quotes from both sources as derogatory with equal frequency. Jointly, the two studies show an overlap in the content of convicted rapists’ talk and the contents of contemporary lads’ mags, and suggest that the framing of such content within lads’ mags may normalize it for young men.