ENGINEERING CAREERS: WOMEN IN A MALE-DOMINATED FIELD

A national survey was conducted to compare the background and career characteristics of men and women engineers differing in the number of years since they completed their BS degrees (0–5, 6–10, 11–15, and 16–20 years). The parents of women engineers were more likely to have college degrees and to be employed in professional positions than were the parents of men engineers. Women engineers were less likely to be married and were more likely to be childless than were the men. Both men and women were influenced by courses and work–related factors in their decisions to pursue engineering, but men made their career decisions sooner than women. Although men and women reported comparable levels of technical responsibility in their present jobs, gender differences favoring men were found for supervisory responsibility and salary among those with more than five years of experience, with the gap between men and women increasing with experience. Men with 16–20 years of experience and all four degree cohorts of women endorsed the opinion that there are better opportunities for men than women in engineering.     

Tempo,Rhythm, and Aging in Golf

Older (n = 12) and younger (n = 12) golfers attempted to hit a golf ball into a target net a short distance away. An accelerometer attached to the back of the clubhead measured the applied force. In contrast to the more typical finding of slower perceptual-motor performance by older adults, older golfers reached their peak downswing force earlier in the shot and also exhibited a trend toward a faster overall speed or tempo of the shot. Additionally, older golfers exhibited greater changes in applied force and greater variability. A pattern of divergence among the force-time histories from multiple shots suggested that the overall person-plus-golf-club dynamics were unstable during a part of the shot. Older adults may be slower in controlling this instability. Half of the participants heard a tone whose pitch was proportional to their force. These participants had a slower follow through; however, they did not make significantly more or fewer shots than participants who had not been presented with the tone. Analyses of the temporal covariation among the backswing, downswing, and follow-through favored a chain-like temporal structure over a hierarchical, proportional structure. The pattern of covariation suggests that the tempo and rhythm of the shot are not independent and that changing one's tempo may disrupt rhythm.     

Women Engineering Students: Competence Perceptions and Achievement Goals in the Freshman Engineering Course

Research suggests that women engineering students in the United States typically have lower competence perceptions than their male classmates. According to achievement goal theory, low competence perceptions are associated with avoidance achievement goals which involve a preoccupation with avoiding failure rather than a focus on approaching success. The current study was conducted to see if women in a freshmen engineering course would rate their competence lower than their male classmates and if they would be more likely to adopt avoidance achievement goals. Further, would lower competence perceptions (i.e., perceived ability, self-efficacy) and avoidance goals have negative effects on grades and interest in the freshman engineering course? A sample of 117 first-semester engineering students from a U.S. Midwestern University completed surveys several times during the semester. Data were also collected from a sample of 82 first-semester students enrolled in an introductory psychology course for comparison purposes. Women in the freshman engineering course reported lower competence perceptions and higher levels of avoidance achievement goals than did men in the engineering course and than men and women in the psychology course. However, there were no significant gender differences in course grades or interest in the engineering course. Further analyses revealed indirect effects of gender on grades and interest in the engineering course through the competence perceptions. The indirect effects were negative suggesting lower values for women in engineering. The avoidance achievement goals were not influential in the indirect effects. The implications of these finding for the persistence of women in engineering are discussed.     

Quantifying the cognitive trajectories of extrapolated movements

Subjects' extrapolations of a piecewise constant-velocity trajectory and a constant-acceleration trajectory were mapped out over a sequence of trials that required only a button-press response. Without any performance feedback, subjects' extrapolations of both trajectories approximated an acceleration segment followed by a constant-velocity segment. With performance feedback, subjects' extrapolations of the constant-acceleration trajectory approached optimal performance. Subsequent withdrawal of the feedback shifted the entire extrapolated trajectory. These feedback-related changes in the extrapolated trajectory can be interpreted as changes in two parameters of a cognitive representation of the movement pattern.     

Fitts' Law in two dimensions with hand and head movements

Subjects performed two-dimensional discrete movements either with a helmet-mounted sight or with a joystick. Fitts' Law was found to be a good predictor of the speed-accuracy tradeoff for both systems. The joystick produced faster movement times than the helmet-mounted sight. For both systems, horizontal and vertical movements were slightly faster than diagonal movements. Two dimensional generalizations of Fitts' Law were discussed in terms of multidimensional scaling. The obtained pattern of movement times was found to be intermediate to the predictions of Euclidean and City-block models of the movement space. Muscle coordination strategies were considered, and a strictly serial coordination model was rejected. A strictly parallel model was also rejected for the helmet-mounted sight, but not for the joystick.     

On marching to two different drummers: perceptual aspects of the difficulties

People have remarkable difficulty generating two responses that must follow different temporal sequences, unless the temporal patterns are simply related (e.g., periods in 2:1, 3:1 relation). For example, it is hard to tap to two conflicting rhythms presented concurrently (i.e., a polyrhythm) using the right and left hands (Klapp, 1979), or to tap while articulating a conflicting speech utterance (Klapp, 1981). The present experiments indicate that difficulties in processing conflicting rhythms occur even when people must (a) merely monitor the stimuli and indicate the termination of one rhythmic sequence or (b) tap with a single hand. Responding to polyrhythms is thus difficult even without multiple limb coordination. Furthermore, the difficulty of two-handed tapping to polyrhythms that involve two different tones was found to decrease as the pitch difference between the tones was decreased. This result indicates that the difficulty of rhythmic coordination can be perceptually manipulated in a striking fashion. Polyrhythmic performance thus provides an excellent opportunity for examining possible interactions of perceptual and motor organizations.     

Tests of Parallel Versus Integrated Structure in Polyrhythmic Tapping

Musically trained subjects tapped three beats with their right hand versus two beats with their left hand in synchrony with two corresponding tones. For independent groups of subjects, the pitch difference of the two tones was either small to encourage an integrated perceptual organization or large to encourage a streamed perceptual organization. Integrated versus parallel motor organization was tested by examining the pattern of covariances among intertap intervals. All subjects exhibited integrated motor organization. An integrated multiplicative hierarchical model of motor organization was superior to a serial chained model and to an independent hierarchical model in describing the pattern of covariances. The subjects who heard tones that encouraged an integrated percept performed with less variability than the subjects who heard tones that encouraged a streamed percept. This superior performance with an integrated motor organization and an integrated rather than a streamed perceptual organization is interpreted as evidence for temporal perceptual-motor compatibility.     

The Relative Dominance of Schemata in a Manual Tracking Task: Input Patterns,System Dynamics,and Movement Patterns

As subjects repeatedly track the same spatiotemporal pattern, they learn to anticipate the pattern and thereby to reduce their effective time delay. The successive organization of perception hypothesis suggests that subjects progress from an error-nulling mode to a pursuit mode, in which they respond to the estimated instantaneous input pattern, and then to a precognitive mode, in which they rely on memory of the input pattern or movement pattern. We used a transfer of training experiment involving position and rate control systems to distinguish among these strategies by determining the relative dominance of schemata for the input pattern, system dynamics, and movement pattern. Results indicated that subjects relied on a memorized movement pattern, which is characteristic of the precognitive mode. Adaptations of this transfer methodology may be useful in testing other theories that postulate multiple schemata for the control of perceptual-motor behavior.     

Changes in achievement goals and competence perceptions across the college semester

We investigated the relationship between changes in perceptions of competence and changes in achievement goals across a college semester for students enrolled in an introductory psychology course. Two types of competence perceptions were examined: self-efficacy for learning and normative perceived ability. Changes in normative perceived ability were predicted to relate to changes in performance goals, but not mastery goals. Because mastery goals rely on self-referent standards to evaluate ability, we predicted changes in self-efficacy for learning would relate to changes in mastery goals. We also expected changes in self-efficacy for learning to relate to changes in performance goals because learning can lead to the demonstration of superior competence. The predictions were supported for mastery and performance-approach goals, but not for performance-avoidance goals. Very little change in performance-avoidance goals was observed. Scores on the first course exam also predicted change in performance-approach goals, with this effect partially mediated by competence perceptions.