Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.women Subject: Gender-specific responses to s/he Message-ID: <1315@dciem.UUCP> Date: Mon, 31-Dec-84 13:33:39 EST Article-I.D.: dciem.1315 Posted: Mon Dec 31 13:33:39 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 31-Dec-84 14:49:04 EST Distribution: net Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 31 I apologise for re-opening a long-dormant discussion, but the following abstract appears in a recent issue of J. Psycholinguistic Research: Generic Versus Specific Inclusion of Women in Language: Effects on Recall Mary Crawford and Linda English J. Psycholinguistic Research, 1984, 13, 373 Considerable evidence suggests that although "generic" terms (he, his, man, men) may be intended to refer to both women and men, they are often interpreted literally and thus function to exclude women. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that readers' sensitivity to and literal interpretation of gender references in prose can affect performance in a memory task. College student subjects read essays that were identical except for the use of "generic" terms versus those that deliberately include women (he/she, his/her, people). In experiment 1, the Generic essay form led to better recall of the essay's factual content by male subjects, while the Specific form produced better recall by females. A similar pattern was found for female subjects in experiment 2. In both experiments, effects were stronger for good learners. Results suggest that Generic and Specific styles are more relevant to men and women, respectively, and that the observed differences in recall may be mediated by differences in interpretation and interest based on perceived relevance. ============= -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt