Parents’ Beliefs about High School Students’ Spatial Abilities: Gender Differences and Associations with Parent Encouragement to Pursue a STEM Career and Students’ STEM Career Intentions

In the present study, we investigated whether parents’ beliefs about their high school aged adolescents’ spatial abilities (i.e., spatial visualization, mental manipulation, and navigation abilities) differed based on their child’s gender. We also examined whether these beliefs related to parents’ encouragement of their child to pursue a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) career as well as students’ actual STEM major and career intentions. Data were collected from 117 pairs of U.S. high school students and one of their parents. We found that parents of young men thought their child had higher mental manipulation and navigation abilities than did parents of young women, even after statistically controlling for adolescents’ actual spatial abilities. Parents who perceived that their child had higher mental manipulation ability were more likely to encourage their child to pursue a STEM career, and those students were more likely to report that they intended to pursue a STEM career. These findings suggest that parents’ beliefs about how good their child is at spatial tasks may be based more strongly on gender stereotypes than on their child’s actual spatial abilities. Helping to make parents aware of these beliefs could be a potential lever of intervention to increase women’s participation in STEM careers.

     

Ethical Decision Making in Autonomous Vehicles: The AV Ethics Project

Science and Engineering Ethics - The ethics of autonomous vehicles (AV) has received a great amount of attention in recent years, specifically in regard to their decisional policies in accident...     

Population growth and social structure of confined colonies of mongolian gerbils: Scent gland size and marking behaviour as indices of social status

Male gerbils have larger ventral scent glands, and they mark more than females. In both sexes, scent gland activity is dependent on gonadal hormones. Observations on colonies of gerbils, living in enclosures or cages, showed that both scent gland size and marking behaviour were related to social status. In colonies founded by a single pair, breeding was confined to the original female. The infertility of the daughters was due to failure of sexual maturation. As this was always associated with a lack of development of the scent glands, the functional state of the latter could be used as an index of fecundity. A change in social organization (eg removal of the parents) caused previously infertile females to conceive and was accompanied by development of the scent glands If there was competition for dominance, the scent glands of the losers regressed; at autopsy, their ovaries and uteri appeared to be nonfunctional. The founding father usually had a larger scent gland than his sons, but the inhibition of sexual function was not as severe as in the females. However, the father characteristically showed much more marking behaviow in a neutral territory than his sons. None of the fem ales-except the mother-showed appreciable marking, and her scores were much lower than those of the dominant male. Asymptotic populations were reached at about the same level in enclosures and cages, implicating an intrinsic capacity for control independent of the number of animals per unit of space but probably related to the natural size of a social group. Stabilization of numbers was achieved not only by reproductive inhibition of young females, but also by cessation of breeding by the founding mother and death of litters. Littermates raised in enclosures without their parents showed delayed sexual maturation accompanied by fighting which resulted in the formation of a hierarchy headed by a breeding female and a dominant (marking) male.     

A reversal in the direction of detection asymmetry: effects of spatial density,spatial regularity,and retinal eccentricity

We analyzed detection asymmetry, using openand closed squares as target and contextelements. It was found that varying density, regularity, and target eccentricity not only can modulate the amount of asymmetry, but also can produce a reversal in the direction of the asymmetry. The results suggest that the different stimuli are processed with different grains of analysis,consisting of in some cases, single elements and their properties and, in other cases, larger units of the stimulus array and more globalproperties. A detection task that can utilize the properties that are available with a given grain of analysis would show an advantage over a task for which the given grain of analysis is not as favorable, resulting indetection asymmetry in one direction or another.     

How does background information improve memory for text content?

In two experiments, we investigated whether reading background information benefits memory for text content by influencing the amount of content encoded or the organization of the encoded content. In Experiment 1, half of the participants read background information about the issues to be discussed in the text material, whereas half did not. All the participants were then tested for free recall and cued recall of text content. Free recall was greater for individuals who read issue information than for those who did not. The groups did not differ on cued recall, suggesting that background information did not facilitate the encoding of more text content. Measures of representational organization indicated that increased recall in the issue information group resulted from better organization of content in memory. Experiment 2 extended these findings, using background information about text sources, demonstrated that the efficacy of background information depends on the semantic relationship between that information and text content.     

Phenomenal characteristics of guided imagery,natural imagery,and autobiographical memories

Research indicates that guided imagery experiences can be mistaken for actual experiences under some circumstances. One explanation for such effects is that memory representations of guided imagery and actual events contain similar phenomenal characteristics such as sensory and contextual details, making the source of the events less distinguishable. This study examined this prediction, comparing memory characteristic ratings for guided imagery experiences with those for memories of perceived and natural imagery events (e.g., fantasies). Results replicated previous findings for the difference between perceived and natural imagery memories. Guided imagery ratings were also lower than those for perceived memories for most sensory details (sound, smell, and taste) and temporal details. However, guided imagery ratings for reflective details were lower than both perceived and natural imagery memory ratings. Thus, guided imagery was similar to natural imagery with respect to sensory details, but similar to perceived memories with respect to reflective details.     

Does priming specific syllables during tip-of-the-tongue states facilitate word retrieval in older adults?

This experiment investigated whether phonological priming of syllables helps resolve tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states in young and older adults. Young, young-old, and old-old adults read general knowledge questions and responded "know," "TOT," or "don't know" accordingly. Participants then read a list of 10 words that included 3 phonological primes corresponding solely to the first, middle, or last syllable of the target word. Young and young-old adults resolved more TOTs after first-syllable primes, but old-old adults showed no increase in TOT resolution following any primes. These results indicate that presentation of the first syllable of a missing word strengthens the weakened phonological connections that cause TOTs and increases word retrieval, but not for old-old adults who experience greater deficits in the transmission of priming across these connections.     

Age differences in overlapping-task performance: evidence for efficient parallel processing in older adults

Two psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted to examine overlapping processing in younger and older adults. A shape discrimination task (triangle or rectangle) for Task 1 (T1) and a lexical-decision task (word or nonword) for Task 2 (T2) were used. PRP effects, response time for T2 increasing as stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) decreased, were obtained for both age groups. The effect of word frequency on T2 was smaller at the short SOA than at the long SOA, reflecting slack effects, which were larger for older than younger adults in both experiments. These results suggest that older adults can perform lexical access of T2 in parallel with the processing of T1 at least as efficiently as younger adults.     

A crossmodal attentional blink between vision and touch

There is currently a great deal of interest regarding the possible existence of a crossmodal attentional blink (AB) between audition and vision. The majority of evidence now suggests that no such crossmodal deficit exists unless a task switch is introduced. We report two experiments designed to investigate the existence of a crossmodal AB between vision and touch. Two masked targets were presented successively at variable interstimulus intervals. Participants had to respond either to both targets (experimental condition) or to just the second target (control condition). In Experiment 1, the order of target modality was blocked, and an AB was demonstrated when visual targets preceded tactile targets, but not when tactile targets preceded visual targets. In Experiment 2, target modality was mixed randomly, and a significant crossmodal AB was demonstrated in both directions between vision and touch. The contrast between our visuotactile results and those of previous audiovisual studies is discussed, as are the implications for current theories of the AB.