Although the accuracy of the diagnosis of cognitive impairment in the elderly depends on the appropriateness of the norms for the neuropsychological tests used, the importance of examining health status, native intelligence, and gender when attempting to describe cognitive changes of aging has received little attention. The Rey Auditory Verbal…

This investigation, part of an on-going research program examining social learning theory applications to career development, tested several hypotheses derived from A. Bandura's self-efficacy theory in the career-related domain of mathematics. Specifically, the effects of failure on a mathematics task and on a task irrelevant to mathematics were…

In the area of cognitive skills, the actual differences between males and females are relatively small. Females score slightly higher on verbal tasks and males score slightly higher on mathematical tasks. According to the cognitive approach to stereotypes, people should perceive these differences to be quite large. To determine whether subjects…

This paper reviews the research on sex differences in intellectual functioning as it relates to verbal abilities, spatial abilities, and reading aptitudes. Research supports such statements as: sex aptitudes do not become significantly apparent until adolescence; males perform better than females on problems involving field-indep (picking out one…

In 1922, Otto Jespersen hypothesized that women were more fluent (exhibited less hesitation in oral expression) than men because they had smaller and more central vocabularies, consisting of common words and combinations. Men's vocabularies were considered more extensive due to the inclusion of numerous novel, technical, and infrequently used…

Focusing on activity preferences at home rather than activity preferences in nursery school, this study examined the relationship between preschoolers' daily activities and spatial abilities. Parents of 52 preschoolers recorded their children's home activities for 7 days. Children were given three measures of spatial ability and one vocabulary…

There is a growing awareness among researchers that the magnitude of cognitive sex differences is affected by a number of subject variables. To examine spatial and verbal cognitive sex differences as a function of personal and family handedness, the 478 offspring who participated in the Minnesota family study and 454 offspring who participated in…

Although the most desired attributes of a geographer are spatial perception and verbal ability, research reveals that each sex consistently demonstrates superiority in only one of the abilities. In the United States females score significantly higher in verbal abilities and males score significantly higher in spatial abilities. The differences are…

In 2 experiments, 261 middle school students processed an analogy and responded to factual and inferential target-domain questions in a study of variables that contribute to the formation of analogical misconceptions. Results of both experiments support a six-variable model of analogical misconception formation. (SLD)

The consistency of gender differences in attributions for success in two subject areas representing verbal and mathematical tasks was investigated. English and social science were used to represent verbal tasks and mathematics the computational task. In natural classroom settings, a total of 1,110 community college students completed a…

This study tests the hypothesis of a gender difference in academic achievement as a function of measurement method. The biasing influence of measurement method on achievement has been recognized. Campbell and Fiske (1959) suggested that a considerable proportion of the variation in test scores may be due to features of the form of test (method)…

Although sex differences in research have received considerable attention, few researchers have examined the bias, social context, and process of that research. In analyzing sex differences in academic achievement over the past 10 years, three areas (mathematics, spatial ability, and verbal ability) would appear to establish consistent sex…

The relationship between students' relative ability in visual-spatial tasks as well as their verbal and numerical skills to their performance in an introductory college chemistry course was investigated. For 700 subjects, verbal and mathematics Scholastic Aptitude Test scores (SAT-V) and (SAT-M) and the following four perceptual tests were…

The relative influence of gender, coursework, affect, and other hypothesized determinants of mathematics achievement among high school seniors was examined, using data from the High School and Beyond (HSB) database. The HSB base-year survey used a multi-stage sampling scheme. Complete data on the variables of this study were available for 16,358…

This longitudinal study was designed to investigate the nature and extent of sex differences in both verbal and spatial abilities among black and white children. Six scales of early cognitive functioning were administered at three times (at 8 months, 4 years and 7 years) to 3,013 children. Two major hypotheses were examined: (1) if cognitive…