Watch and learn! Carefully selected media links will help bring key concepts and theories to life, preparing you for your studies and exams. 

Click on the following links which will open in a new window.

Video Links

• Cognitive Styles in Eating Disorders
  This video presents James Lock, a Stanford University researcher, talking about his research linking eating disorders with cognitive flexibility and central coherence.

• Trucks and Trigonometry: Do Boys Excel in Math and Engineering?
  This video presents a nice discussion of gender differences in spatial ability, and how they might be connected to the toys that children enjoy in childhood.

• Can Stereotype Threat Explain the Gender Gap in Mathematics Performance?
  This discussion summarizes research on stereotype threat and the role that it does or does not play in the performance of women on mathematics assessments. A really nice critical thinking piece!

Audio Links

• How We Pay Attention.
  Talk of the Nation examines the myth of multitasking, and the reality of “individual differences” in the ability to pay attention, in a discussion with psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. Why do so many of us think that “I’m better than most people at this?”

• Gender Differences and Cognitive Abilities.
  A remote broadcast from the APA’s Science Leadership Conference in 2005, featured on Talk of the Nation, discusses myths and realities about cognitive gender differences.

• Encouraging American Girls to Embrace Math.
  Actress and mathematician Danica McKellar argues that being good at math can be “cool,” even for a female. This Talk of the Nation segment also features a report on a team of U.S. girls that recently held their own in an international math Olympiad competition.

Web Resources

• Cognitive Style
  For a change of pace, this page presents an antholopogist’s view of cognitive style.
  Follow-up exercise: Ask students to review the article, paying particular attention to the idea of cross-cultural comparisons in cognitive style.

• Study challenges conventional wisdom about gender and math performance.
  A summary of research by Janet Mertz and Jonathan Kane, examining data from 86 countries.
  Follow-up exercise: Ask students to read the article and then comment on what it might mean regarding the source of gender differences seen in studies of math ability.

• Sex ID: Spatial Ability
  This BBC web page examines male-female differences in spatial tasks.
  Follow-up exercise: Ask students to use the link to “Take the Sex ID test.” Does it discriminate between males and females in your classroom?

• Mental Rotation and Gender
  This Hanover College experiment on mental rotation, also featured in Chapter 8, could be used in connection with Chapter 13 if you wish to compare the performance of male and female students in your classroom.