Dear Colleagues,
For over a decade I have been using a neat (and tidy) experimental
exercise in my methods course modeled after the work of the famous
psychologist Elizabeth Loftus. I show a 30 second video clip of a scene
in which there is a female screaming. She is definitely NOT the focal
point of the scene (which is a man being held over the side of a bridge
about to be dropped into the river below as a result of a drug deal
gone bad. BTW, it's the opening scene from the movie "New Jack City").
Anyway, after I show this video, I distribute a short questionnaire (4
questions to be exact). The third question asks "What is your estimate
of the age of the woman who was screaming in the video?" However, for
half of the class, the word "Woman" is replaced by the word "girl". The
responses to the question vary, but there has typically been a
statistically different response (p<.01 in many instances) when the
word "woman" is used, compared to when the word "girl" is used. This
short demonstration is very effective in starting to discuss
experimental manipulation (and the importance of careful word
selection) and tends to capture students' attention. Semester after
semester, the results had been predictable (15 or 16 semesters in a row
I would get impressively similar and statistically significant
results... on average the woman is estimated to be a bit over 29 yrs
and the girl around 23 yrs). What is curious to me is that in the last
5 semesters I have done this exercise in class, it has only "worked" 2
of 5 times (and one of those two the results were barely significant).
So I've asked myself "why has there been a change in the results of
something that had worked MANY, many times consecutively?" One of the
hypotheses I have to entertain-- especially given that the experimental
manipulation is so subtle-- is that students may becoming less
concerned about "details" when they read a sentence. They may be
becoming "gist" readers (i.e., get the gist of the sentence and don't
worry about the details). That interpretation would certainly be
consistent with some of the other academically-related problems I seem
to be encountering with some of my students.
Just thought I'd share these curious observations.
Cheers,
-S
========================================================
Steven M. Specht, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology
Utica College
Utica, NY 13502
(315) 792-3171
"Mice may be called large or small, and so may elephants, and it is
quite understandable when someone says it was a large mouse that ran up
the trunk of a small elephant" (S. S. Stevens, 1958)
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