Meredith Meyer

Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines

Womens participation and attitudes to talent Some scientific disciplines have lower percentages of women in academia than others. Leslie et al. hypothesized that general attitudes about the discipline would reflect the representation of women in those fields (see the Perspective by Penner). Surveys revealed that some fields are believed to require attributes such as brilliance and genius, whereas other fields are believed to require more empathy or hard work. In fields where people thought that raw talent was required, academic departments had lower percentages of women. Science, this issue p. 262; see also p. 234 General opinions about talent versus effort hold sway over representation of women in academic departments. [Also see Perspective by Penner] The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women’s underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.’s in molecular biology were women versus only 31% in philosophy). We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. This hypothesis extends to African Americans’ underrepresentation as well, as this group is subject to similar stereotypes. Results from a nationwide survey of academics support our hypothesis (termed the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis) over three competing hypotheses.

Segmenting dynamic human action via statistical structure

Human social, cognitive, and linguistic functioning depends on skills for rapidly processing action. Identifying distinct acts within the dynamic motion flow is one basic component of action processing; for example, skill at segmenting action is foundational to action categorization, verb learning, and comprehension of novel action sequences. Yet little is currently known about mechanisms that may subserve action segmentation. The present research documents that adults can register statistical regularities providing clues to action segmentation. This finding provides new evidence that structural knowledge gained by mechanisms such as statistical learning can play a role in action segmentation, and highlights a striking parallel between processing of action and processing in other domains, such as language.

Women are underrepresented in fields where success is believed to require brilliance

Women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a prominent concern in our society and many others. Closer inspection of this phenomenon reveals a more nuanced picture, however, with women achieving parity with men at the Ph.D. level in certain STEM fields, while also being underrepresented in some non-STEM fields. It is important to consider and provide an account of this field-by-field variability. The field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) hypothesis aims to provide such an account, proposing that women are likely to be underrepresented in fields thought to require raw intellectual talent—a sort of talent that women are stereotyped to possess less of than men. In two studies, we provide evidence for the FAB hypothesis, demonstrating that the academic fields believed by laypeople to require brilliance are also the fields with lower female representation. We also found that the FABs of participants with college-level exposure to a field were more predictive of its female representation than those of participants without college exposure, presumably because the former beliefs mirror more closely those of the field’s practitioners (the direct “gatekeepers”). Moreover, the FABs of participants with college exposure to a field predicted the magnitude of the field’s gender gap above and beyond their beliefs about the level of mathematical and verbal skills required. Finally, we found that beliefs about the importance of brilliance to success in a field may predict its female representation in part by fostering the impression that the field demands solitary work and competition with others. These results suggest new solutions for enhancing diversity within STEM and across the academic spectrum.

Acoustic Packaging: Maternal Speech and Action Synchrony

The current study addressed the degree to which maternal speech and action are synchronous in interactions with infants. English-speaking mothers demonstrated the function of two toys, stacking rings and nesting cups to younger infants (6-9.5 months) and older infants (9.5-13 months). Action and speech units were identified, and speech units were coded as being ongoing action descriptions or nonaction descriptions (examples of nonaction descriptions include attention-getting utterances such as “Look!” or statements of action completion such as “Yay, we did it!”). Descriptions of ongoing actions were found to be more synchronous with the actions themselves in comparison to other types of utterances, suggesting that: 1) mothers align speech and action to provide synchronous “acoustic packaging” during action demonstrations; and 2) mothers selectively pair utterances directly related to actions with the action units themselves rather than simply aligning speech in general with actions. Our results complement past studies of acoustic packaging in two ways. First, we provide a quantitative temporal measure of the degree to which speech and action onsets and offsets are aligned. Second, we offer a semantically based analysis of the phenomenon, which we argue may be meaningful to infants known to process global semantic messages in infant-directed speech. In support of this possibility, we determined that adults were capable of classifying low-pass filtered action- and nonaction-describing utterances at rates above chance.

Child categorization: Child categorization

Categorization is a process that spans all of development, beginning in earliest infancy yet changing as childrens knowledge and cognitive skills develop. In this review article, we address three core issues regarding childhood categorization. First, we discuss the extent to which early categories are rooted in perceptual similarity versus knowledge-enriched theories. We argue for a composite perspective in which categories are steeped in commonsense theories from a young age but also are informed by low-level similarity and associative learning cues. Second, we examine the role of language in early categorization. We review evidence to suggest that language is a powerful means of expressing, communicating, shaping, and supporting category knowledge. Finally, we consider categories in context. We discuss sources of variability and flexibility in childrens categories, as well as the ways in which childrens categories are used within larger knowledge systems (e.g., to form analogies, make inferences, or construct theories). Categorization is a process that is intrinsically tied to nearly all aspects of cognition, and its study provides insight into cognitive development, broadly construed. WIREs Cogn Sci 2011 2 95-105 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.96 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Statistical learning of action: The role of conditional probability

Identification of distinct units within a continuous flow of human action is fundamental to action processing. Such segmentation may rest in part on statistical learning. In a series of four experiments, we examined what types of statistics people can use to segment a continuous stream involving many brief, goal-directed action elements. The results of Experiment 1 showed no evidence for sensitivity to conditional probability, whereas Experiment 2 displayed learning based on joint probability. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that additional exposure to the input failed to engender sensitivity to conditional probability. However, the results of Experiment 4 showed that a subset of adults—namely, those more successful at identifying actions that had been seen more frequently than comparison sequences—were also successful at learning conditional-probability statistics. These experiments help to clarify the mechanisms subserving processing of intentional action, and they highlight important differences from, as well as similarities to, prior studies of statistical learning in other domains, including language.

Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic Cue to Particular vs. Generic Reference

Generic noun phrases, or generics, refer to abstract kind categories (Dogs bark) rather than particular individuals (Those dogs bark). How do children distinguish these distinct kinds of reference? We examined the role of one socio-pragmatic cue, namely pointing, in producing and comprehending generic versus particular reference. Study 1 demonstrated that parents of preschool-aged children pointed more when referring to particular instances versus generic kinds. Studies 2 and 3 addressed how children interpreted pointing when linguistic cues were ambiguous with respect to the generic versus particular distinction, for example, They are afraid of raccoons said in the presence of several dogs, where they could refer to the generic category (dogs) or a particular set (the/those dogs). Results indicate only a partial socio-pragmatic sensitivity to pointings role in marking particular reference. They additionally speak to issues related to childrens acquisition of generics and their expectations regarding transmission of generic knowledge.

History and essence in human cognition

Bullot & Reber (B&R) provide compelling evidence that sensitivity to context, history, and design stance are crucial to theories of art appreciation. We ask how these ideas relate to broader aspects of human cognition. Further open questions concern how psychological essentialism contributes to art appreciation and how essentialism regarding created artifacts (such as art) differs from essentialism in other domains.

Attention reorganizes as structure is detected in dynamic action

Once one sees a pattern, it is challenging to “unsee” it; discovering structure alters processing. Precisely what changes as this happens is unclear, however. We probed this question by tracking changes in attention as viewers discovered statistical patterns within unfolding event sequences. We measured viewers’ “dwell times” (e.g., Hard, Recchia, & Tversky, 2011) as they advanced at their own pace through a series of still-frame images depicting a sequence of event segments (“actions”) that were discoverable only via sensitivity to statistical regularities among the component motion elements. “Knowledgeable” adults, who had had the opportunity to learn these statistical regularities prior to the slideshow viewing, displayed dwell-time patterns indicative of sensitivity to the statistically defined higher-level segmental structure; “naïve” adults, who lacked the opportunity for prior viewing, did not. These findings clarify that attention reorganizes in conjunction with statistically guided discovery of segmental structure within continuous human activity sequences. As patterns emerge in the mind, attention redistributes selectively to target boundary regions, perhaps because they represent highly informative junctures of “predictable unpredictability.”

The inherence heuristic: a basis for psychological essentialism?

Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) provide evidence that psychological essentialism rests on a domain-general attention to inherent causes. We suggest that the inherence heuristic may itself be undergirded by a more foundational cognitive bias, namely, a realist assumption about environmental regularities. In contrast, when considering specific representations, people may be more likely to activate attention to non-inherent, contingent, and historical links.