Societal stereotypes depict girls as less interested than boys in computer science and engineering. We demonstrate the existence of these stereotypes among children and adolescents from first to 12th ...grade and their potential negative consequences for girls' subsequent participation in these fields. Studies 1 and 2 (
= 2,277; one preregistered) reveal that children as young as age six (first grade) and adolescents across multiple racial/ethnic and gender intersections (Black, Latinx, Asian, and White girls and boys) endorse stereotypes that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering. The more that individual girls endorse gender-interest stereotypes favoring boys in computer science and engineering, the lower their own interest and sense of belonging in these fields. These gender-interest stereotypes are endorsed even more strongly than gender stereotypes about computer science and engineering abilities. Studies 3 and 4 (
= 172; both preregistered) experimentally demonstrate that 8- to 9-y-old girls are significantly less interested in an activity marked with a gender stereotype ("girls are less interested in this activity than boys") compared to an activity with no such stereotype ("girls and boys are equally interested in this activity"). Taken together, both ecologically valid real-world studies (Studies 1 and 2) and controlled preregistered laboratory experiments (Studies 3 and 4) reveal that stereotypes that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering emerge early and may contribute to gender disparities.
Computer science has one of the largest gender disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. An important reason for this disparity is that girls are less likely than boys to ...enroll in necessary "pipeline courses," such as introductory computer science. Two experiments investigated whether high-school girls' lower interest than boys in enrolling in computer science courses is influenced by stereotypes of the field. We further tested whether these stereotypes can be communicated by the physical classroom environment, and whether changing this environment alters girls' interest. In 2 experiments (N = 269), a computer science classroom that did not project current computer science stereotypes caused girls, but not boys, to express more interest in taking computer science than a classroom that made these stereotypes salient. The gender difference was mediated by girls' lower sense of belonging in the course, even beyond the effects of negative stereotype concerns, expectations of success, and utility value. Girls' lower sense of belonging could be traced to lower feelings of fit with computer science stereotypes. Individual differences in fit with stereotypes predicted girls' belonging and interest in a stereotypical, but not a nonstereotypical, classroom. Adolescence is a critical time for career aspirations. Girls may avoid computer science courses because current prevailing stereotypes of the field signal to them that they do not belong. However, providing them with an educational environment that does not fit current computer science stereotypes increases their interest in computer science courses and could provide grounds for interventions to help reduce gender disparities in computer science enrollment.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
Infants represent the acts of others and their own acts in commensurate terms. They can recognize cross‐modal equivalences between acts they see others perform and their own felt bodily movements. ...This recognition of self–other equivalences in action gives rise to interpreting others as having similar psychological states such as perceptions and emotions. The ‘like me’ nature of others is the starting point for social cognition, not its culmination.
Despite having made significant inroads into many traditionally male-dominated fields (e.g., biology, chemistry), women continue to be underrepresented in computer science and engineering. We propose ...that students' stereotypes about the culture of these fields-including the kind of people, the work involved, and the values of the field-steer girls away from choosing to enter them. Computer science and engineering are stereotyped in modern American culture as male-oriented fields that involve social isolation, an intense focus on machinery, and inborn brilliance. These stereotypes are compatible with qualities that are typically more valued in men than women in American culture. As a result, when computer science and engineering stereotypes are salient, girls report less interest in these fields than their male peers. However, altering these stereotypes-by broadening the representation of the people who do this work, the work itself, and the environments in which it occurs-significantly increases girls' sense of belonging and interest in the field. Academic stereotypes thus serve as gatekeepers, driving girls away from certain fields and constraining their learning opportunities and career aspirations.
•The longitudinal study tested children at 10.5months, 2.5years, and 4.5years.•Gaze following at 10.5months predicted use of mental-state terms at 2.5years.•Use of mental-state terms at 2.5years ...predicted theory of mind at 4.5years.•Gaze following feeds children’s linguistic coding of psychological concepts.•This in turn supports the ontogenesis of an explicit theory of mind.
This longitudinal study tested the same children at three time points: infancy (10.5months of age), toddlerhood (2.5years of age), and early childhood (4.5years of age). At 10.5months, infants were assessed experimentally with a gaze-following paradigm. At 2.5years, children’s language skills were measured using the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories. At 4.5years, children’s explicit theory of mind was assessed with a standard test battery. Analyses revealed that infants with higher gaze-following scores at 10.5months produced significantly more mental-state words at 2.5years and that children with more mental-state words at 2.5years were more successful on the theory-of-mind battery at 4.5years. These predictive longitudinal relationships remained significant after controlling for general language, maternal education, and nonsocial attention. The results illuminate the bridging role that language plays in connecting infants’ social cognition to children’s later understanding of others’ mental states. The obtained specificity in the longitudinal relations informs theories concerning mechanisms of developmental change.
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced novel stressors into the lives of youth. Identifying factors that protect against the onset of psychopathology in the face of these stressors is critical. We ...examine a wide range of factors that may protect youth from developing psychopathology during the pandemic. We assessed pandemic-related stressors, internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, and potential protective factors by combining two longitudinal samples of children and adolescents (N = 224, 7-10 and 13-15 years) assessed prior to the pandemic, during the stay-at-home orders, and six months later. We evaluated how family behaviors during the stay-at-home orders were related to changes in psychopathology during the pandemic, identified factors that moderate the association of pandemic-related stressors with psychopathology, and determined whether associations varied by age. Internalizing and externalizing psychopathology increased substantially during the pandemic. Higher exposure to pandemic-related stressors was associated with increases in internalizing and externalizing symptoms early in the pandemic and six months later. Having a structured routine, less passive screen time, lower exposure to news media about the pandemic, and to a lesser extent more time in nature and getting adequate sleep were associated with reduced psychopathology. The association between pandemic-related stressors and psychopathology was reduced for youths with limited passive screen time and was absent for children, but not adolescents, with lower news media consumption related to the pandemic. We provide insight into simple, practical steps families can take to promote resilience against mental health problems in youth during the COVID-19 pandemic and protect against psychopathology following pandemic-related stressors.
When 6-year-olds received experimentally-designed experiences programming robots, their interest in programming was significantly higher than those without such experiences. In the controls without ...these experimental experiences, there were significant gender differences, such that boys’ interest exceeded that of girls (pairwise comparison of light bars, ***p<.001). For girls with the robot treatment, interest in programming was significantly higher than girls in the controls (pairwise comparison of girls’ bars, **p<.01), and their interest was statistically indistinguishable from that of boys.
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•Six-year-olds held stereotypes that boys are better at robots and programming.•Stereotypes about robots were stronger than stereotypes about math and science.•Girls given programming experience showed higher technology interest and self-efficacy.•Experience also eliminated gender differences in technology interest and self-efficacy.•Providing girls with positive STEM experiences is beneficial.
The gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) engagement is large and persistent. This gap is significantly larger in technological fields such as computer science and engineering than in math and science. Gender gaps begin early; young girls report less interest and self-efficacy in technology compared with boys in elementary school. In the current study (N=96), we assessed 6-year-old children’s stereotypes about STEM fields and tested an intervention to develop girls’ STEM motivation despite these stereotypes. First-grade children held stereotypes that boys were better than girls at robotics and programming but did not hold these stereotypes about math and science. Girls with stronger stereotypes about robotics and programming reported lower interest and self-efficacy in these domains. We experimentally tested whether positive experience with programming robots would lead to greater interest and self-efficacy among girls despite these stereotypes. Children were randomly assigned either to a treatment group that was given experience in programming a robot using a smartphone or to control groups (no activity or other activity). Girls given programming experience reported higher technology interest and self-efficacy compared with girls without this experience and did not exhibit a significant gender gap relative to boys’ interest and self-efficacy. These findings show that children’s views mirror current American cultural messages about who excels at computer science and engineering and show the benefit of providing young girls with chances to experience technological activities.
Recent neuroscientific evidence suggests that empathy for pain activates similar neural representations as the first-hand experience of pain. However, empathy is not an all-or-none phenomenon but it ...is strongly malleable by interpersonal, intrapersonal and situational factors. This study investigated how two different top-down mechanisms - attention and cognitive appraisal - affect the perception of pain in others and its neural underpinnings.
We performed one behavioral (N = 23) and two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments (N = 18). In the first fMRI experiment, participants watched photographs displaying painful needle injections, and were asked to evaluate either the sensory or the affective consequences of these injections. The role of cognitive appraisal was examined in a second fMRI experiment in which participants watched injections that only appeared to be painful as they were performed on an anesthetized hand. Perceiving pain in others activated the affective-motivational and sensory-discriminative aspects of the pain matrix. Activity in the somatosensory areas was specifically enhanced when participants evaluated the sensory consequences of pain. Perceiving non-painful injections into the anesthetized hand also led to signal increase in large parts of the pain matrix, suggesting an automatic affective response to the putatively harmful stimulus. This automatic response was modulated by areas involved in self/other distinction and valence attribution - including the temporo-parietal junction and medial orbitofrontal cortex.
Our findings elucidate how top-down control mechanisms and automatic bottom-up processes interact to generate and modulate other-oriented responses. They stress the role of cognitive processing in empathy, and shed light on how emotional and bodily awareness enable us to evaluate the sensory and affective states of others.
Prior to the modern era, the stars in the night sky were readily visible across the globe, but light pollution has created disparities in the opportunity to see these astronomical objects with the ...naked eye. This alteration may measurably impact human behavior. We hypothesize that light pollution is related to the development of people’s interest in astronomy, which often serves as a “gateway” to science more broadly. In a state-by-state analysis, we used location information to examine astronomy interest data for millions of US residents. Results show that, among populations with low light pollution, a feeling of “wonder about the universe” is prevalent (r = 0.50). We found that this human emotion mediates the association between low light pollution and behavioral interest in astronomy. Although the effects of light pollution on astronomy, biology, ecology, and health are well-known, the present work demonstrates that light pollution is also relevant to human scientific behavior, with broad implications for science education and society.
Advanced inhibitory control skills have been found in bilingual speakers as compared to monolingual controls (
Bialystok, 1999
). We examined whether this effect is generalized to an unstudied ...language group (Spanish‐English bilingual) and multiple measures of executive function by administering a battery of tasks to 50 kindergarten children drawn from three language groups: native bilinguals, monolinguals (English), and English speakers enrolled in second‐language immersion kindergarten. Despite having significantly lower verbal scores and parent education/income level, Spanish‐English bilingual children's raw scores did not differ from their peers. After statistically controlling for these factors and age, native bilingual children performed significantly better on the executive function battery than both other groups. Importantly, the relative advantage was significant for tasks that appear to call for managing conflicting attentional demands (Conflict tasks); there was no advantage on impulse‐control (Delay tasks). These results advance our understanding of both the generalizability and specificity of the compensatory effects of bilingual experience for children's cognitive development.
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