Children's and adults' recall of sex‐stereotyped toy pictures: Effects of presentation and memory task

Gender schema theories predict a memory bias toward sex‐congruent information. The present study examined how presentation of stimuli and encoding conditions influence gender schematic processing in children and adults. One hundred and sixty 5‐ to 13‐year olds and adult males and females viewed 36 sex‐stereotyped toy pictures that were presented in a static and dynamical way. Half of the participants were asked to memorize the pictures (intentional memory) and half were not told that they would be expected to later recall the pictures (incidental memory). Weak gender schematic processing was observed only during the incidental memory task. Children and adults recalled more static than dynamic gender‐stereotyped pictures, and performance was superior in the intentional than in the incidental memory condition. Gender schematic processing was similar across the age groups. In addition, participants were more likely to recall male‐stereotyped toys. Implications for gender schema theories and education are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Songs as an aid for language acquisition

In previous research, Saffran and colleagues [Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 606-621.] have shown that adults and infants can use the statistical properties of syllable sequences to extract words from continuous speech. They also showed that a similar learning mechanism operates with musical stimuli [Saffran, J. R., Johnson, R. E. K., Aslin, N., & Newport, E. L. (1999). Abstract Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults. Cognition, 70, 27-52.]. In this work we combined linguistic and musical information and we compared language learning based on speech sequences to language learning based on sung sequences. We hypothesized that, compared to speech sequences, a consistent mapping of linguistic and musical information would enhance learning. Results confirmed the hypothesis showing a strong learning facilitation of song compared to speech. Most importantly, the present results show that learning a new language, especially in the first learning phase wherein one needs to segment new words, may largely benefit of the motivational and structuring properties of music in song.     

Choosing a Place of Death: The Influence of Pain and of Attitude Toward Death1

This experimental study sought to verify if factors like pain or attitude toward death can determine the choice of a place of death. Using a questionnaire developed from Triandis’(1980) theory, the influence of pain on the intention of choosing a place of death was measured among 138 respondents. “Attitude toward death,” used as a control variable, was measured by means of the Death Attitude Profile. Variance analyses (p < .008) demonstrated the influence of pain on intention of choosing a place of death and on the cognitive component. Linear regression (p .002) highlighted 2 determinants of intention of choosing a place of death: moral norm and social role. As for attitude toward death, it seems to have no influence on the choice of a place of death.     

Effects of Socioeconomic Status (SES) Information on Cognitive Ability Inferences: When Low-SES Students Make Use of a Self-Threatening Stereotype

Two studies tested whether students' socioeconomic status (SES) and academic achievement level moderate their use of the SES stereotype (i.e., the belief that the low-SES individuals are intellectually inferior to their high-SES counterparts). In Study 1, low versus high achievers with a low versus a high SES were given social class information (derived from a pilot study) about several targets and were then asked to infer these targets' memory ability. In Study 2, participants were given memory performance information about several targets and were then asked to infer these targets' possessions and cultural activities (i.e., SES indicators). In both studies, only the low-SES students generated stereotype-consistent inferences.     

Self-Efficacy Beliefs Amongst Parents of Young Children: Validation of a Self-Report Measure

The self-efficacy belief (SEB) concept is discussed in the context of parenting. A questionnaire, the Echelle Globale du Sentiment de Compétence Parentale (EGSCP), assessing several domain-specific SEBs and three related cognitive constructs, was developed with 705 French-speaking parents of 3- to 7-year-old children. The EGSCP displayed good psychometric properties. Age-related differences and differences between mothers and fathers illustrated the questionnaire’s discriminative properties. Relations were also found between EGSCP and several criterion variables: support, satisfaction, self-esteem and stress, childrearing behavior, and children’s social competence and behavior. The refinement of the SEB concept in the parenting context provides a more comprehensive view of both mothers’ and fathers’ cognition. The empirical and clinical implications of this are discussed.     

The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are differentially involved in serial memory retrieval in non-stress and stress conditions

We previously showed that 24 h after learning, mice significantly remembered the first (D1) but not the second (D2) discrimination in a serial spatial task and that an acute stress delivered 5 min before the test phase reversed this memory retrieval pattern.A first experiment evaluated the effects of dorsal hippocampus (HPC) or prefrontal cortex (PFC) lesions, these two brain areas being well-known for their involvement in serial and spatial memory processes. For this purpose, six independent groups of mice were used: non-lesioned (controls), PFC or HPC-lesioned animals, submitted or not to an acute stress (electric footshocks; 0.9 mA). Results show that (i) non-stressed controls as well as PFC-lesioned mice (stressed or not) remembered D1 but not D2; (ii) stressed controls and HPC-lesioned mice (stressed or not) remembered D2 but not D1; (iii) stress significantly increased plasma corticosterone in controls and PFC-lesioned mice, but not in HPC-lesioned mice which already showed a significant plasma corticosterone increase in non-stressed condition.Since data from this first experiment showed that stress inhibited the hippocampal-dependent D1 memory retrieval, a second experiment evaluated the behavioral effect of intrahippocampal corticosterone injection in non-stressed mice. Results show that intrahippocampal corticosterone injection induced a reversal of serial memory retrieval pattern similar to that induced by acute stress.Overall, our study shows that (i) in non-stress condition, the emergence of D1 is HPC-dependent; (ii) in stress condition, the emergence of D2 requires the PFC integrity; moreover, intrahippocampal corticosterone injection mimicked the effects of stress in the CSD task.     

Does making a conversation asynchronous reduce the negative impact of phone call on driving?

Mobile phone use at the wheel has a proven negative impact on driving. This paper aims to assess whether using an answerphone instead of a normal phone reduces this negative impact. The answerphone makes communication asynchronous and splits it into three disconnected and successive phases: interaction with the voice interface, listening to the message and answering, which have been evaluated separately.The experiment was conducted on a fixed base simulator, with 30 participants (half male and female, aged from 18 to 50 years, driving at least 5000 km per year).The results show better scores for correct responses to stimuli for answerphone communications than for phone communications, although response times were higher in both communication conditions than in the driving alone condition. When the three phases of answerphone use were compared, interacting with the answerphone and listening to the message were found to be significantly less disturbing than answering, in terms of correct responses and response times.By making the conversation asynchronous, the answerphone avoids direct interaction between driver and caller. The fact that communication is under the driver’s control allows him/her to pace the interaction better. Lastly, splitting up the conversation into different phases decreases the overall task difficulty.     

The Sound of Mute Vowels in Auditory Word-Stem Completion

Some studies have argued that orthography can influence speakers when they perform oral language tasks. Words containing a mute vowel provide well-suited stimuli to investigate this phenomenon because mute vowels, such as the second <e> in <vegetable>, are present orthographically but absent phonetically. Using an auditory word-stem completion task, we tested whether subjects were influenced by the presence of mute vowels. We ran experiments in two languages which contain numerous mute-vowel words: Tigrinya, which uses a syllabic/moraic writing system, and French, which uses an alphabetic writing system. We argue that Tigrinya and French speakers based their completion on the sound form of words, rather than the written one. We suggest that the presence of mute vowels at the underlying phonological level, rather than their orthographic representation, influences speakers in the word-stem completion task. Some effects previously attributed to orthography may instead be attributable to underlying phonological representations.