Mary Jo Kane

Young children's mental models determine analogical transfer across problems with a common goal structure

Analogical transfer in 3- to 5-year-olds was examined in three studies where the children were required to notice the common underlying goal structure of a set of problems. The children were either required to recall the prototype story before tackling the transfer problem, or were explicitly prompted to attend to the common goal structure. Subjects who spontaneously focused on the goal structure in their recall, or who were prompted to do so, transferred efficiently regardless of age. Children who did not represent the problems at the level of underlying goal paths, but instead attended to interesting surface features of particular stories, failed to transfer. Children as young as 3 years of age have the underlying competence to transfer a common problem solution; level of representation rather than age determines transfer efficiency. Transfer flexibility is not a simple function of age but depends on the level of analysis afforded the base analogy. The results are discussed in terms of emergent theories of mental models for learning via analogy.

Exploring Elite Female Athletes’ Interpretations of Sport Media Images: A Window Into the Construction of Social Identity and ‘‘Selling Sex’’ in Women’s Sports

Scholars have produced a body of evidence demonstrating media portrayals of sportswomen emphasize femininity/heterosexuality versus athletic competence and argue that such coverage trivializes women’s sports. Little research attention has been given to how these portrayals are interpreted by various audiences, including female athletes. This study explores how elite female athletes respond to the ways they are represented within sport media. We employed reception research where viewers deconstruct the meaning of texts and how that meaning impacts their feelings toward a subject. We examined the subject of sportswomen’s dual identities to determine how they wished to be portrayed. Thirty-six team and individual sport athletes were shown images ranging from on-court competence to off-court soft pornography and asked to choose which image best represented themselves and their sport, as well as increased interest/respect for their sport. Results indicated that competence was the overwhelming choice for best “represents self/sport” and “increases respect.” Forty-seven percent of respondents picked soft porn to best “increase interest.” This latter finding reflected participants’ belief that “sex sells” women’s sports, particularly for male audiences. Results were analyzed using critical feminist theory to unpack sport media and its relationship to gender, privilege, and power.

The Better Sportswomen Get, the More the Media Ignore Them:

In this commentary on Cooky, Messner, and Hextrum’s (2013) article “Women Play Sport, but not on TV: A Longitudinal Study of Televised News Media,” Mary Jo Kane assesses key findings in light of the changes that have taken place in women’s participation and achievement in sport as well as the central tendencies of sport journalists and broadcasters. Kane’s analysis explores the dynamic tensions at play in cultural sensibilities about interest in women’s sports. Kane presents evidence that rising interest in women’s sports runs counter to the mainstream media logic that “nobody is interested” in women’s sporting achievements. In a closing assessment, Kane calls for the need for audience reception research to broaden the content analytic findings offered by Cooky, Messner, and Hextrum to better understand what draws fans to women’s sports.

Effects of gender and athletic participation on driving capability.

This study sought to determine if spatiotemporal skills, represented by success in high level sport, transfer to driving and, if so, whether such transfer is mediated by the gender of the driver. Using an emergency-braking test, we compared the driving ability of male and female athletes and non-athletes and showed that athletes achieved significantly longer and therefore superior durations for time-to-contact. The advantage of athletic participation thus did not appear in movement time but rather in the ability to produce desirable performance in context. We found that males and females did not differ significantly with respect to driving, however, involvement in sport apparently transfers to aspects of driving and so provides benefits beyond the intrinsic reward of the sports activities themselves.