Despite international advancements in gender equality across a variety of societal domains, the underrepresentation of girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) ...related fields persists. In this study, we explored the possibility that the sex difference in mathematics anxiety contributes to this disparity. More specifically, we tested a number of predictions from the prominent gender stratification model, which is the leading psychological theory of cross-national patterns of sex differences in mathematics anxiety and performance. To this end, we analyzed data from 761,655 15-year old students across 68 nations who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Most importantly and contra predictions, we showed that economically developed and more gender equal countries have a lower overall level of mathematics anxiety, and yet a larger national sex difference in mathematics anxiety relative to less developed countries. Further, although relatively more mothers work in STEM fields in more developed countries, these parents valued, on average, mathematical competence more in their sons than their daughters. The proportion of mothers working in STEM was unrelated to sex differences in mathematics anxiety or performance. We propose that the gender stratification model fails to account for these national patterns and that an alternative model is needed. In the discussion, we suggest how an interaction between socio-cultural values and sex-specific psychological traits can better explain these patterns. We also discuss implications for policies aiming to increase girls' STEM participation.
This paper investigates dynamic changes in instrumental (i.e., work‐related) tie‐seeking patterns and the structure of a communication network following a downsizing event—whereby many employees are ...simultaneously eliminated from a network. Our analysis spans a two‐year period and applies a resource‐ and network‐change approach to examine how survivors develop revised resource‐acquisition strategies while repositioning themselves after a downsizing. Our results demonstrate that two temporary logics of tie formation—a suspension of within‐unit homophily and a preference for seeking ties with long‐tenured employees—help employees acquire betweenness centrality during the disruption period. Specifically, we find that disruption initiates a transitional period after downsizing in which new tie‐making logics are employed, including seeking out ties with long‐tenured employees and employees outside of one's department. We observed post‐disruption, during the stabilization period after downsizing, where logics used for tie‐making in the disruption period were abandoned, pre‐disruption tie‐making logics were resumed, and betweenness centrality remained relatively constant. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these results and suggest future research directions.
Abstract
Background
Clinical trials of extracranial-intracranial (EC-IC) bypass surgery studied patients in subacute and chronic stage after ischemic event.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the short-term ...outcomes of EC-IC bypass in progressive acute ischemic stroke or recent transient ischemic attacks.
Methods
The study was a retrospective review at a single tertiary referral center from 2008 to 2015. Inclusion criteria consisted of EC-IC bypass within 1 yr of last ischemic symptoms ipsilateral to atherosclerotic occlusion of internal carotid or middle cerebral artery. Early bypass group who underwent surgery within 7 d of last ischemic symptoms were compared to late bypass group who underwent surgery >7 d from last ischemic symptom. The primary endpoint was perioperative ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke or intracranial hemorrhage within 7 d of surgery.
Results
Of 126 patients who underwent EC-IC bypass during the period, 81 patients met inclusion criteria, 69 (85%) persons had carotid artery occlusion, 7 (9%) had proximal MCA occlusion, and 5 (6%) had both. Early surgery had a 31% (9/29) perioperative stroke rate compared to 11.5% (6/52) of patients undergoing late bypass (P = .04). Of patients with acute stroke within 7 d of surgery, 41% (7/17) had perioperative stroke within 7 d (P = .07). Six of nine patients (67%) with blood pressure dependent fluctuation of neurologic symptoms had perioperative stroke (P = .049).
Conclusion
EC-IC bypass in setting of acute symptomatic stroke within 1 wk may confer higher risk of perioperative stroke. Patients undergoing expedited or urgent bypass for unstable or fluctuating stroke symptoms might be at highest risk for perioperative stroke.
► Children in grades 1–5 (and adults) estimated values on number lines. ► By third grade, children began to rely on the midpoint to make estimates. ► Error and latency patterns supported the ...hypothesis of a midpoint strategy. ► The developmental changes favored the log-to-lin shift model. ► Linear responders had higher math achievement scores than exponential responders.
We tested children in Grades 1 to 5, as well as college students, on a number line estimation task and examined latencies and errors to explore the cognitive processes involved in estimation. The developmental trends in estimation were more consistent with the hypothesized shift from logarithmic to linear representation than with an account based on a proportional judgment application of a power function model; increased linear responding across ages, as predicted by the log-to-lin shift position, yielded reasonable developmental patterns, whereas values derived from the cyclical power model were difficult to reconcile with expected developmental patterns. Neither theoretical position predicted the marked “M-shaped” pattern that was observed, beginning in third graders’ errors and fourth graders’ latencies. This pattern suggests that estimation comes to rely on a midpoint strategy based on children’s growing number knowledge (i.e., knowledge that 50 is half of 100). As found elsewhere, strength of linear responding correlated significantly with children’s performance on standardized math tests.
The authors provide a brief review of the history and assessment of math anxiety, its relationship to personal and educational consequences, and its important impact on measures of performance. ...Overall, math anxiety causes an “affective drop,” a decline in performance when math is performed under timed, high-stakes conditions, both in laboratory tests as well as in educational settings. This means that math achievement and proficiency scores for math-anxious individuals are underestimates of true ability. The primary cognitive impact of math anxiety is on working memory, particularly problematic given the important role working memory plays in math performance. The authors conclude with a discussion of risk factors for math anxiety and some factors to be kept in mind when working with math-anxious students.
Breast cancer in young patients is known to exhibit more aggressive biological behavior and is associated with a less favorable prognosis than the same disease in older patients, owing in part to an ...increased incidence of brain metastases. The mechanistic explanations behind these findings remain poorly understood. We recently reported that young mice, in comparison to older mice, developed significantly greater brain metastases in four mouse models of triple-negative and luminal B breast cancer. Here we have performed a quantitative mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis to identify proteins potentially contributing to age-related disparities in the development of breast cancer brain metastases. Using a mouse hematogenous model of brain-tropic triple-negative breast cancer (MDA-MB-231BR), we harvested subpopulations of tumor metastases, the tumor-adjacent metastatic microenvironment, and uninvolved brain tissues via laser microdissection followed by quantitative proteomic analysis using high resolution mass spectrometry to characterize differentially abundant proteins potentially contributing to age-dependent rates of brain metastasis. Pathway analysis revealed significant alterations in signaling pathways, particularly in the metastatic microenvironment, modulating tumorigenesis, metabolic processes, inflammation, and neuronal signaling. Tenascin C (TNC) was significantly elevated in all laser microdissection (LMD) enriched compartments harvested from young mice relative to older hosts, which was validated and confirmed by immunoblot analysis of whole brain lysates. Additional
in vitro
studies including migration and wound-healing assays demonstrated TNC as a positive regulator of tumor cell migration. These results provide important new insights regarding microenvironmental factors, including TNC, as mechanisms contributing to the increased brain cancer metastatic phenotype observed in young breast cancer patients.
Post-mortem examination of dead and live stranded beach-cast pinnipeds and cetaceans for determination of a cause of death provides valuable information for the management, mitigation and prosecution ...of unintentional and sometimes malicious human impacts, such as vessel collision, fishing gear entanglement and gunshot. Delayed discovery, inaccessibility, logistics, human safety concerns, and weather make these events challenging. Over the past 3 decades, in response to public concern and federal and state or provincial regulations mandating such investigations to inform mitigation efforts, there has been an increasing effort to objectively and systematically investigate these strandings from a diagnostic and forensic perspective. This Theme Section provides basic investigative methods, and case definitions for each of the more commonly recognized case presentations of human interactions in pinnipeds and cetaceans. Wild animals are often adversely affected by factors such as parasitism, anthropogenic contaminants, biotoxins, subclinical microbial infections and competing habitat uses, such as prey depletion and elevated background and episodic noise. Understanding the potential contribution of these subclinical factors in predisposing or contributing to a particular case of trauma of human origin is hampered, especially where putrefaction is significant and resources as well as expertise are limited. These case criteria descriptions attempt to acknowledge those confounding factors to enable an appreciation of the significance of the observed human-derived trauma in that broader context where possible.
Abstract Background This paper presents a new psychological model of why low income increases risk of mental distress. Consistent with evolutionary perspectives on disorder, income was predicted to ...relate to mental distress only through acting as an indirect proxy for social rank. Methods Participants were part of a longitudinal cohort sample of 30,000 people who were representative of the British population and who completed measures annually for up to 17 years. Mental distress was assessed via the General Health Questionnaire which measures anxiety, depression, and general functioning. Results Both income and the rank of the income within the region (and the rank of income within other comparison groups, such as similar individuals) predicted current and future distress. However, when distress was jointly regressed on income and income rank, only income rank remained a significant predictor. Limitations The outcome measure was self-report (although the predictor was objective). Conclusions The results support psychosocial rather than material explanations of why income relates to distress, and suggest that a concern for social rank is the mechanism through which these effects occur. This mechanism is consistent with an evolutionarily based “involuntary defeat syndrome” where hard wired responses to low social rank increase risk for disorder and the Decision by Sampling model of how people make relative judgments. Negative cognitions associated with low social rank (particularly defeat and entrapment) may be clinically targetable in both prevention and treatment programs to reduce socio-economic mental health disparities.
PurposeHiring managers commonly rely on system-justifying motives and attitudes during résumé screening. Given the prevalent use of modern résumé formats (e.g. LinkedIn) that include not only an ...applicant's credentials but also headshot photographs, visible sources of information such as an applicant's race are also revealed while a hiring manager simultaneously evaluates a candidate's suitability. As a result, such screening is likely to activate evaluation bias. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of a hiring manager's perceptions of race-system justification, that is, support for the status quo in relations between Black and White job candidates in reinforcing or mitigating hiring bias related to in-group and out-group membership during résumé screening.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from system justification theory (SJT) in a pre-selection context, in an experimental study involving 174 human resource managers, the authors tested two boundary conditions of the expected relationship between hiring manager and job candidate race on candidate ratings: (1) a hiring manager's affirmative action (AA) attitudes and system-justifying attitudes and (2) a job candidate's manipulated suitability for a position. This approach enabled us to juxtapose the racial composition of hiring manager–job candidate dyads under conditions in which the job candidate's race and competency for a posted position were manipulated to examine the conditions under which White and Black hiring managers are likely to make biased evaluations. The authors largely replicated these findings in two follow-up studies with 261 students and 361 online raters.FindingsThe authors found that information on a candidate's objective suitability for a job resulted in opposite-race positive bias among Black evaluators and same-race positive bias among White evaluators in study 1 alone. Conversely, positive attitudes toward AA policies resulted in in-group favoritism and strengthened a positive same-race bias for Black evaluators (study 1 and 2). We replicated this finding with a third sample to directly test system-justifying attitudes (study 3). The way in which White raters rated White candidates reflected the same attitudes against systems (AA attitudes) that Black raters rating Black candidates exhibited in the authors’ first two studies. Positive system-justifying attitudes or positive attitudes toward AA did not, however, translate into the elevation of same-race candidate ratings of suitability above those of opposite-race candidates.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the size of the sample is on par with the percentage of Blacks nationwide in private-sector managerial-level positions ideally, the authors would have preferred to oversample Black HR managers. Given the scarcity of focus on Black HR managers, future researchers, using diverse samples of evaluators should also consider not only managers' and candidates' race but also their social dominance orientation. Moreover, it is important that future researchers use more racially diverse samples from other industries to more fully identify the ways in which the dynamics of system-justifying processes can emerge to influence evaluation bias during résumé screening.Practical implicationsAdvances in technology pose new challenges to HR hiring practices. This study attempts to fill a void regarding the unintended effects of bias during digital résumé screening. These trends have important HR implications. Initial screening of a job applicant's credentials while concurrently viewing the individual's photograph is likely to activate subconscious evaluation bias, produces inaccurate applicant ratings. This study's findings should caution hiring managers about the potential for bias to arise when viewing job candidates' digital résumés and encourage them to carefully examine various boundary conditions on racial similarity bias effects on applicant pre-screening and subsequent hiring decisions.Social implicationsThe study’s results suggest that bias might be attenuated as organizational leaders engage in efforts to understand their system-justifying motives and examine perceptions of the workplace social hierarchy (i.e. responses to status hierarchies) linked to perceptions of the status quo. For example, understanding how system justifying motives influence evaluation bias will inform how best to design training and other interventions that link discussions of workforce diversity to the relationships among groups within the organization's social hierarchy. This line of research should be further explored to better understand the complex forces at work when hiring managers adopt system-justifying motives during hiring evaluations.Originality/valueThe authors address the limitations of prior research by examining interactions between boundary conditions in a real-world context using real human resources hiring managers and more contemporary personnel-screening practices to test changes in the direction and strength of the relationship between hiring manager–job candidate race and hiring manager evaluations. Thus, the authors’ findings have implications for hiring bias and understanding of system-justification processes, particularly regarding how, when and why hiring managers support the status quo (i.e. perpetuate inequity) even if they are disadvantaged as a result.
This study evaluates the efficacy of a physically-active number learning game for young preschoolers. The intervention adapts Ramani and Siegler’s (Child Develop 79(2):375–394, 2008) successful The ...Great Race by modifying the mode of play from seated at a table to jumping with two feet on a large game mat. 75 children (mean age: 46 months) in the first year of a 2-year Title I preschool program were assessed in the fall on enumeration, verbal counting, cardinal principle knowledge (CPK), numeral recognition, and magnitude comparisons; children with a strong conceptual understanding of the cardinality principle were screened out (n = 11) of the intervention. 64 children were randomly assigned to the jumping game, the original seated game, or to a no-intervention control group. For the intervention, children met with an experimenter for four, 15–20-min sessions over a 3-week period and post-intervention assessments were completed 1 week later. All children completed a year-end assessment 5 months after the post-intervention assessment. Of the 64 children in the intervention group, 51 had complete data from all three time points. Repeated measures ANOVA and chi-square tests assessed the effectiveness of the intervention on children’s number knowledge and skills; models tested for the main effects of time and group and the interaction of time*group. Although all numeracy measures showed significant improvement over time, no differences between groups over time emerged. The absence of intervention effects is discussed in the context of intentionally aligning children’s number skills and knowledge with teacher practices and recent early numeracy interventions that target counting and set labelling.
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