Handedness and dementia

Some researchers have speculated that left-hand dominance is more prevalent among patients suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer's type which began prior to age 65 yr. and that, in those patients, the disease runs a more rapid course. In the present study, seven left-handed dementia patients were matched with seven right-handed dementia patients on the basis of age and years of education and were compared with regard to neuropsychological compromise. While the left-handed group was somewhat more impaired than the right-handed subjects, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant.     

Focused memory search in fact retrieval

Several studies of fact retrieval have shown that the more facts a person learns about a concept, the longer it takes him or her to retrieve any of these facts. This result has been interpreted to mean that retrieval of a fact about a concept involves a search of all facts stored in memory with that concept. In the present study, it is suggested that retrieval involves not an unfocused search of all facts stored with a concept, but rather a focused memory search that examines relevant stored facts and ignores irrelevant information. This argument is supported by three experiments in which subjects first learned simple facts (e.g., “The banker likes horses”) and then made speeded true-false decisions for test probes le.g., “The banker likes elephants”). Specifically, results suggest that facts stored with a concept may be organized into subsets. For example, a person’s knowledge about Richard Nixon might be organized into subsets concerning Nixon’s resignation, his trips to China, his family, and so on. The data further suggest that a person attempting to retrieve a fact about a concept (e.g., the name of Nixon’s wife) may simply decide which subset is most likely to contain the desired fact (e.g., the subset concerning Nixon’s family) and search that subset. If the sought-for fact is found in this subset, the search process terminates. If, however, the desired information is not located, other subsets of facts may be searched before the retrieval attempt is given up. The notion that memory search focuses on relevant stored facts and ignores irrelevant information may help to explain why experts (i.e., people who know a large number of facts about a topic) do not experience great difficulty in retrieving facts in their areas of expertise.     

EFFECTS OF LEARNING ABOUT GENDER DISCRIMINATION ON ADOLESCENT GIRLS' ATTITUDES TOWARD AND INTEREST IN SCIENCE

Gender discrimination has contributed to the gender imbalance in scientific fields. However, research on the effects of informing adolescent girls about gender discrimination in these fields is rare and controversial. To examine the consequences of learning about gender-based occupational discrimination, adolescent girls ( n = 158, ages 11 to 14) were randomly assigned to either (a) a standard intervention program aimed at increasing girls' interest in science or (b) a nearly identical program that included information about gender discrimination. Girls' interest in, and attitudes toward, science were assessed using a pre/post design. Only girls who learned about gender discrimination showed increases in science self-efficacy and belief in the value of science; interest in scientific fields was unaffected by the intervention programs. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed.     

Blazing and Illuminating a Trail: The Career and Scholarship of Janet Taylor Spence

Janet Taylor Spence was a gender pioneer in her career as an academic psychologist and an important contributor to the psychological study of gender roles. That is, she both blazed a path for women in academia and contributed to our scientific understanding of the factors that produce and shape such paths. In this piece, I address both these aspects of her life and work. I begin by briefly highlighting Spence’s groundbreaking posts in academia and her influence on my own academic career. With respect to her research, I identify five aspects of Spence’s work that were innovative and made important, lasting contributions to theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding gender in the United States. I first describe Spence’s commitment to challenging the ideological beliefs about gender held by laypeople and scientists alike by engaging in empirical tests of commonly held beliefs. I next review Spence’s argument that within-individual variability of gender-typing of the self is normative rather than unusual. Third, I describe Spence’s beliefs about the relation between gender-typing of the self and gender-typing of others, and fourth, I describe Spence’s work concerning the mechanisms that support self-perceived femininity and masculinity. In the fifth and final section, I highlight Spence’s treatment of environmental contributions to gender role development.     

The Variability and Flexibility of Gender-Typed Toy Play: A Close Look at Children's Behavioral Responses to Counterstereotypic Models

Gender differences in play behavior are well documented. However, little work has examined the issue of variability of gender-typed behaviors within individuals or within genders. We investigated whether children's gender-typed toy play behavior is (a) variable across time within individuals, and (b) variable in response to exposure to counterstereotypic models. Extensive observations (N=203) were made of 8 highly gender-typed preschool children over 4 months. Variability was assessed by examining changes in the percentage of masculine and feminine toy play across successive days in which (a) gender neutral stories were read (within-individual variability) and (b) gender counterstereotypic stories were introduced (environmental variability). Variability of gender-typed play within individuals and in response to environmental stimuli was found among girls, but not among boys.     

The mediating effect of age on the relationship between child behavior checklist hyperactivity scores and neuropsychological test performance

The relationship between hyperactivity and neuropsychological test performance at different age levels was examined. It was found that for young children (6 to 8 years of age, n=90), there was no significant association between hyperactivity/attentional problems (as measured by the Hyperactivity scale of the Child Behavior Checklist) and performance on neuropsychological tasks thought to contain an attentional component (WISC-R Coding, Arithmetic, and Digit Span; WRAT Arithmetic; and the Benton Visual Retention Test). However, for older children (9 to 12 years of age, n=92), there were significant and large negative correlations between CBC Hyperactivity scores and Coding, WRAT Arithmetic, and Benton VRT scores. Multiple regression analyses supported the above results (for Coding and WRAT Arithmetic), indicating that hyperactivity/inattention has a particularly deleterious effect on test performance (relative to sameage peers) as age increases.Aspects of the research reported in this article were presented at the 1987 meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Washington, D.C. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of William Ingram and Lisa Rosa in the data collection.     

Volumetric asymmetries of the human brain: intellectual correlates

Volumetric measures of the brain and ventricles were derived from CT films and related to intellectual variables from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). Subjects were patients referred for neurological examination for headache or somatic complaints, sometimes accompanied by anxiety or dysphoric affect (N = 41), for whom a comprehensive neurological work-up revealed no evidence of abnormality. The asymmetry of hemispheric volume (left minus right over total, times 100) was correlated (r = .57, p less than .001) with Verbal IQ minus Performance IQ within subjects. No relationship was observed between total brain or hemispheric volumes and IQ scores. Brain and ventricular volumes were larger for the left hemisphere than the right.