The snow is not as bad here as students would like to have us believe
(as far as using it for an excuse to miss classes and exams). Appears
they're shoveling more than snow. Leaves the deceased relatives excuses
available for the spring I guess ;-)
On Feb 6, 2007, at 4:28 PM, Gary Klatsky wrote:
Steve
Could there be a change in the way the words woman and girl are used
among college students? My nonscientific perspective is that there
used to be much more concern in the use of those words than there is
now. If the students aren’t making a distinction in their use of girl
and woman than their assessment of age would not vary.
How’s the snow by you. Classes have been closed in Oswego since Monday
morning.
Gary
Gary J. Klatsky, Ph. D.
Director, Human Computer Interaction M.A. Program
Department of Psychology [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Oswego State University (SUNY)
http://www.oswego.edu/~klatsky
7060 State Hwy 104W Voice: (315) 312-3474
Oswego, NY 13126 Fax: (315) 312-6330
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All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and
justice must
be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will
exert upon events in the political field.
Albert Einstein
From: Steven Specht [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 3:49 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] curious
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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To make changes to your subscription go to:
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enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
========================================================
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)
---
To make changes to your subscription go to:
http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
