Abstract
Students in four high school psychology classes learned the names attached to line-drawn facial features. After each of three multiple-choice acquisition trials, subjects were also given transfer tests on names for the full faces (all four features together). A final retention test on all acquisition materials (individual features) was then given. In acquisition, subjects worked in pairs, alternately performing (selecting the names) or observing (watching paired performer respond). Correct names were shown by slide after all performers had responded. Observers in two of the classes scored paired performers’ responses as correct or incorrect. The results revealed no reliable main effects for the observer-scoring variable but a number of reliable interactions. A highly generalized inhibitory effect in both acquisition and transfer could be attributed to the observer-scoring variable, with males but not females affected.
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Block, J. H. Debatable conclusions about sex differences. Review of E. E. Maccoby and C. N. Jacklin, The psychology of sex differences. Contemporary Psychology, 1976, 21, 517–522.
Maccoby, E. E., & Jacklin, C. N. The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1974.
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Thanks are due Gary Blodick, psychology teacher at Naples Senior High School, Naples, Florida, for his cooperation in this experiment. His four psychology classes were used as subjects, as part of the course work, to familiarize the students with psychological experimentation. In class periods subsequent to the collection of the data, the experiment was described and the nature of experimental psychology generally discussed by the experimenter. I am also indebted to Kathleen Marx for assistance in the collection of the data and to Monica Moore and George Seymour for assistance in the statistical analysis. This research was supported in part by the author’s Research Career Award from the National Institute of Mental Health and by a grant from the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are in no way endorsed by the U.S. Army.
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Marx, M.H. Multiple-choice learning of line-drawn facial features: I. Inhibitory effects of observer scoring. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 14, 437–438 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329503
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329503