chabot@amber.DEC (Lisa S. Chabot) (08/07/84)
:-)
In the recent _Science_News_ (4 Aug 84, vol.126 no.5 pg.70) I read
about some testing done at Kansas State University in Manhattan "to determine
the effects of stress upon a human observer's visual discrimination
sensitivity and response bias", specifically with an aim to looking at the
problem of irate professional tennis players verbally abusing line judges.
The 33 female and 33 mail university p.e. students participating in the study
were show a series of 128 slides of balls landing just in or just out of
court, the slides being flashed on the screen at 8 sec intervals. They
were told to call balls in or out under one of three conditions:
control (no feedback), verbal feedback ("error" was said for incorrect calls),
and electric shock (administered to wrist after incorrect call).
[sounds like physical abuse to me!]
Richard Cox, a sports psychologist at KSU, who is conducting the study,
says that "male subjects are consistently better than female subjects at
discriminating between a ball being in or out" in the control, the difference
decreases in the verbal feedback, and disappears in the electric shock
condition, and that this decrease in differences is caused by worsening of
males' scores. He also reports that individuals are not consistent, that the
same person may report a different call for the same picture [big deal!--lsc]
[and it isn't stated if the difference might correspond to answering under
a different condition--lsc].
Cox relates that he doesn't understand why his results differ from other
research that indicates that females are better than males in most perceptual
situations. Making a correspondence between the conditions of higher stress
in his test and a highly competitive professional tennis situation (and
_Science_News_ describes this as having to be a line judge in a game with
John McEnroe, and they also intimate that he might get a kick out of the
testing methods(!)), Cox says "the women may perform at the same level as the
men." And, "ultimately, it is the goal of this line of research to provide a
measurement tool whereby propective line judges can be evaluated and perhaps
trained." ["in. no--out." <brzzzap> "eeeyouch!" --lsc]
Ah, yes, _Science_News_: the National Enquirer of science magazines.
I thought there were a couple of strange implications here: 1) that SN was
somewhat pleased to find that women might not be as good until you handicap
the men with physical pain, and 2) that McEnroe might carry his animosity
towards once and future line judges outside the court and go as far as
approve of the sadism in Cox's testing methods. But then maybe SN is just
snickering at Sports Psychology.
What is the ground speed of an unladed swallow,
L S Chabot
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