Sex differences in educational outcomes: A cross-national study

Through their organization and curricula, schools either promote separate roles for males and females or operate to minimize differences. This study describes sex differences in science and reading achievement and attitudes for nationwide samples of 14-year-old children in the United States, Sweden, and England. There are largely the same sex differences in all three countries: Male and female pupils have similar reading skills, while girls have more positive reading habits; males outperform females in science, with the smallest difference observed for biology; males have more positive attitudes toward science, except that females believe science to be at least as important a topic as boys do. There is no noteworthy increase in sex distinctions with one more year of schooling, from grade 8 to grade 9. However, in English coeducational schools, girls show a deceleration in science and vocabulary achievement relative to their male peers. Girls in English one-sex schools exceed their male counterparts in reading and several science subjects. It is hypothesized that the role of successful female teachers and peers, and the absence of social pressure from boys, may facilitate girls' learning in these areas. A study is proposed of specific school practices and the ways in which they determine sex discrepancies.An earlier version of this article was presented to the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April 1976. The author is grateful to Heidi Wolfstetter-Kausch for assistance in researching background material for the article.     

Selecting University Lecturers: What is and Should be Done

This paper presents a survey designed to identify the procedures used by British university departments when selecting academic staff and compare them with typical practice in other UK organizations. The results indicate that, compared with other large organizations, university departments make much less use of psychometric tests or assessment centres, relying heavily on the application form, a single interview and a presentation. There were no differences between academic departments of English, Biology or Psychology and the level of academic appointment only affected the composition of the interview panel. Possible reasons for the failure to use modern objective methods of selection are considered. It is argued that universities should apply more objective selection methods based on a full analysis of the competencies required of the higher education lecturer.     

The Effects of Gender on Career Decision Problems in Young Adults

The authors investigated gender differences in psychological problems in the career decision making (CDM) process of young adults. Specifically, problems with decision anxiety, life-goal awareness, luck-fate orientation, authority orientation, and secondary gain motivation were investigated. Methodology involved administering the Career Decision Diagnostic Assessment (CDDA) instrument to 1,006 college students from four universities. Results indicated no gender differences in global levels of problems in CDM. Women reported more problems with life-goal awareness and authority orientation than did men. Men reported more problems with secondary gain motivations than did women. The results are discussed in terms of implications for gender-differentiated career counseling.     

Gender differences in responses to depressed mood in a college sample

Two studies tested the hypothesis that women are more likely than men to focus on themselves and their mood when in a depressed mood, and that this leads them to experience longer periods of depressed mood. In both studies subjects were predominantly Caucasian college students. In our first study, a laboratory study, females chose to engage in an emotion-related task significantly more often than did males, even when this lead them to focus on an existing sad mood. In the second study, a prospective naturalistic study, females were more likely than males to evince an emotion-focused ruminative style of coping with their moods. A ruminative response style at Time 1 was a significant predictor of depression scores at Time 2, even after initial levels of depressed mood were taken into account. Furthermore, once rumination levels were controlled for, gender was no longer a potent predictor of depression outcome. The implications of these response styles for treatment are discussed.We thank Brandi Battistoni, Kim Bergquist, Rachel Carr, Lisa Lougee, and especially Ariel Lang for their invaluable help in data collection. We also thank Chuck Olson, Jannay Morrow, and Rose McDermott for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Representation and computation in a deflationary assessment of Connectionist cognitive science

Connectionism provides hope for unifying work in neuroscience, computer science, and cognitive psychology. This promise has met with some resistance from Classical Computionalists, which may have inspired Connectionists to retaliate with bold, inflationary claims on behalf of Connectionist models. This paper demonstrates, by examining three intimately connected issues, that these inflationary claims made on behalf of Connectionism are wrong. This should not be construed as an attack on Connectionism, however, since the inflated claims made on its behalf have the look of cures for which there are no ailments. There is nothing wrong with Connectionism for its failure to solve illusory problems.     

What Can 1 Million Trials Tell Us about Visual Search?

In a typical visual search experiment, observers look through a set of items for a designated target that may or may not be present. Reaction time (RT) is measured as a function of the number of items in the display (set size), and inferences about the underlying search processes are based on the slopes of the resulting RT × Set Size functions. Most search experiments involve 5 to 15 subjects performing a few hundred trials each. In this retrospective study, I examine results from 2,500 experimental sessions of a few hundred trials each (approximately 1 million total trials). These data represent a wide variety of search tasks. The resulting picture of human search behavior requires changes in our theories of visual search.     

The relation between anger and antisocial beliefs in young offenders

The tendency for youth to report antisocial beliefs has been identified as a major risk factor in delinquency. Advances in emotion research suggest the importance of examining the emotional concomitants of cognitive appraisals such as antisocial beliefs. The present study examined the relation between anger and antisocial beliefs in a sample of young offenders and investigated whether scores on either variable differentiated aggressive from non-aggressive offenders. Twenty-two aggressive and 20 nonaggressive young offenders were compared on two questionnaires measuring anger and antisocial beliefs, respectively. The findings revealed a significant correlation between the two measures. In addition, it was found that the aggressive offenders, compared to their non-aggressive counterparts, scored significantly higher on anger and antisocial beliefs. These findings extended previous research on the characteristics that differentiate aggressive and non-aggressive offenders. Results also support the rationale for incorporating both cognitive and affective components in intervention programs designed for aggressive young offenders.     

The linkage between stimulus frequency and covert peak areas as it relates to monaural localization.

Head-related transfer functions for differently centered narrow noise bands were obtained on 6 subjects. Derived from these measurements were covert peak areas (CPAs), defined as the spatial constellation of loudspeakers that generates maximal sound pressure at the entrance of the ear canal for specific bands of frequency. On the basis of previous data, we proposed that different frequency bands served as important spectral cues for monaural localization of sounds from different loci and that location judgments were directed toward the CPAs associated with the different bands. In the first study, the stimuli were bandpass filtered so that they contained only those frequencies whose associated CPAs occupied either the monaural listener's "upper" or "lower" spatial regions. Loudspeakers, separated by 15 degrees, were stationed in the left hemifield, ranging from 0 degree to 180 degrees azimuth and -45 degrees to 60 degrees elevation. Subjects reported the loudspeaker from which the sound appeared to originate. Judgments of the sound's elevation were in general accord with the CPAs associated with the different frequency segments. In the second study, monaural localization tests were administered in which different 2.0-kHz-wide frequency bands linked with specific CPAs were notch filtered from a 3.5-kHz highpass noise band. For the control condition, the highpass noise was unfiltered. The data demonstrated that filtering a frequency segment linked with specific CPAs resulted in significantly fewer location responses directed toward that particular spatial region. These results demonstrate in greater detail the relation between the directional filtering properties of the pinna and monaural localization of sound.