The composition of category conjunctions

In three experiments, the authors investigated the impression-formation process resulting from the perception of familiar or unfamiliar social category combinations. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to generate attributes associated with either a familiar or unfamiliar social category conjunction. Compared to familiar combinations, the authors found that when the conjunction was unfamiliar, participants formed their impression less from the individual constituent categories and relatively more from novel emergent attributes. In Experiment 2 the authors replicated this effect using alternative experimental materials. In Experiment 3, the effect generalized to additional (orthogonally combined) gender and occupation categories. The implications of these findings for understanding the processes involved in the conjunction of social categories, and the formation of new stereotypes, are discussed.

Unconscious effects of grammatical gender during object categorisation

Does language modulate perception and categorisation of everyday objects? Here, we approach this question from the perspective of grammatical gender in bilinguals. We tested Spanish–English bilinguals and control native speakers of English in a semantic categorisation task on triplets of pictures in an all-in-English context while measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants were asked to press a button when the third picture of a triplet belonged to the same semantic category as the first two, and another button when it belonged to a different category. Unbeknownst to them, in half of the trials, the gender of the third picture name in Spanish had the same gender as that of the first two, and the opposite gender in the other half. We found no priming in behavioural results of either semantic relatedness or gender consistency. In contrast, ERPs revealed not only the expected semantic priming effect in both groups, but also a negative modulation by gender inconsistency in Spanish–English bilinguals, exclusively. These results provide evidence for spontaneous and unconscious access to grammatical gender in participants functioning in a context requiring no access to such information, thereby providing support for linguistic relativity effects in the grammatical domain.

The processing of number and gender agreement in Spanish: an event related potential investigation of the effects of structural distance

Previous research suggests that the processing of agreement is affected by the distance between the agreeing elements. However, the unique contribution of structural distance (number of intervening syntactic phrases) to the processing of agreement remains an open question, since previous investigations do not tease apart structural and linear distance (number of intervening words). We used event related potentials (ERPs) to examine the extent to which structural distance impacts the processing of Spanish number and gender agreement. Violations were realized both within the phrase and across the phrase. Across both levels of structural distance, linear distance was kept constant, as was the syntactic category of the agreeing elements. Number and gender agreement violations elicited a robust P600 between 400 and 900ms, a component associated with morphosyntactic processing. No amplitude differences were observed between number and gender violations, suggesting that the two features are processed similarly at the brain level. Within-phrase agreement yielded more positive waveforms than across-phrase agreement, both for agreement violations and for grammatical sentences (no agreement by distance interaction). These effects can be interpreted as evidence that structural distance impacts the establishment of agreement overall, consistent with sentence processing models which predict that hierarchical structure impacts the processing of syntactic dependencies. However, due to the lack of an agreement by distance interaction, the possibility cannot be ruled out that these effects are driven by differences in syntactic predictability between the within-phrase and across-phrase configurations, notably the fact that the syntactic category of the critical word was more predictable in the within-phrase conditions.

Gender, childhood and children’s literature: the CIRCL approach

This paper explores the unique approach to childhood and children’s literature of the research and teaching of the ‘Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL)’. CIRCL follows in its work the arguments of UK critical theorist Jacqueline Rose in her seminal 1984 book The case of Peter Pan or the impossibility of children’s fiction. Rose’s work has been widely and routinely referenced in Children’s Literature studies particularly, but CIRCL interprets her arguments as having quite different implications than those usually assumed. Rose is generally attributed with having pointed out that ‘childhood’ is not one, homogenous category, but that childhood is divided by gender, race, and ethnic, political and religious (and so on) identities. But for CIRCL this is only a first step in Rose’s arguments and certainly one not unique to her work anyway: the perception of various cultural and historical childhoods is widely held. Instead, my paper explores how Rose’s arguments are centrally about how ‘childhood’ itself cannot be maintained in the face of division, a division, moreover, which operates inevitably at every level, and which derives from Rose’s interpretation of psychoanalysis as formulated by Sigmund Freud, which Rose derives in turn from her readings of the interpretations of Freud by French analyst Jacques Lacan and French critical theorist Jacques Derrida. Finally, my paper argues how Rose’s position is about any ‘identity’, including gender and that this allies her work closely to that of the famous gender theorist Judith Butler, whose arguments are often (mis) understood in the same ways as those of Rose.

Diversity and difference in the everyday lives of Ugandan street children: The significance of age and gender for understanding the use of space

Childhood is characterised by diversity and difference across and within societies. Street children have a unique relationship to the urban environment evident through their use of the city. The everyday geographies that street children produce are diversified through the spaces they frequent and the activities they engage in. Drawing on a range of children-centred qualitative methods, this article focuses on street children's use of urban space in Kampala, Uganda. The article demonstrates the importance of considering variables such as gender and age in the analysis of street children's socio-spatial experiences, which, to date, have rarely been considered in other accounts of street children's lives. In addition the article highlights the need for also including street children's individuality and agency into understanding their use of space. The article concludes by arguing for policies to be sensitive to the diversity that characterises street children's lives and calls for a more nuanced approach where policies are designed to accommodate street children's age and gender differences, and their individual needs, interests and abilities.

Starting well: Gender, care and health in the family context

In this article we present a critique of a series of public policy documents that aim at improvement in health for the general population, particularly families, but fail to recognize or appreciate the implications of gender for the everyday and the long-term experiences of family members. Drawing upon considerations of gender, families, health time and space and previous theoretical work (McKie et al, 2002), we propose the concept of healthscapes to aid the analysis and development of public policies. A healthscapes approach allows analysis of health policy within the diverse and multi-dimensional notions of time, space and gender that infuse the lifecourse. We assert that consideration of the gendered and generational project of caring particularly in relation to the (re)production of health, should involve a reflective inter-play between theory research and policy.

'Black skins-white masks': Postcolonial reflections on 'race', gender and second generation return migration to the Caribbean

This paper illustrates the opportunities afforded by the adoption of postcolonial discourse in development geography, drawing specifically on issues of transnationalism, hybridity and inbetweeness. The utility of such notions and associated approaches is illustrated by the authors' current research on the migration of young, second generation and foreign-born 'Bajan-Brits' to the small Caribbean island nation of Barbados, the homeland of their parents. Focussing on issues of 'race' and gender, the paper examines the experiences of return migration among this cohort from an interpretative perspective framed within postcolonial discourse. It argues that notwithstanding the considerable sociocultural problems of adjustment encountered, these Bajan-Brit 'returnees' may be seen as occupying positions of relative economic privilege. Theirs is a liminal space derived by virtue of having been born and/or raised in the UK and being of the black 'race'. Accordingly, they are demonstrated to be both advantaged and disadvantaged; both transnational and national; and black but, in some senses, symbolically white.

Reflections of geography and gender, then and now

Women and Geography Study Group Publication on the anniversary of Geography and Gender. The Women and Geography Study Group's publication "Geography and Gender Reconsidered" (ISBN 0 -902447 - 26 - 2) can now be purchased in UK, USA and Canada. This self-publication on CD-Rom was produced to celebrate and reflect upon the 20 years since the groundbreaking "Geography and Gender" published by the WGSG in 1984, and to coincide with a session at the IGU conference in Glasgow in Aug 2004. The self-publication format allowed a more flexible approach to writing, in addition to minimising the price of the final produce while maximising return for the study group (to support student conference attendance, reading weekends and other activities).

Diversity and difference in the everyday lives of Ugandan street children: The significance of age and gender for understanding the use of space

Childhood is characterised by diversity and difference across and within societies. Street children have a unique relationship to the urban environment evident through their use of the city. The everyday geographies that street children produce are diversified through the spaces they frequent and the activities they engage in. Drawing on a range of children-centred qualitative methods, this article focuses on street children's use of urban space in Kampala, Uganda. The article demonstrates the importance of considering variables such as gender and age in the analysis of street children's socio-spatial experiences, which, to date, have rarely been considered in other accounts of street children's lives. In addition the article highlights the need for also including street children's individuality and agency into understanding their use of space. The article concludes by arguing for policies to be sensitive to the diversity that characterises street children's lives and calls for a more nuanced approach where policies are designed to accommodate street children's age and gender differences, and their individual needs, interests and abilities.

Gender stereotyping and decision processes: extending and reversing the gender bias in fame judgements

M. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald (1995) demonstrated a gender bias in fame judgments—that is, an increase in judged fame due to prior processing that was larger for male than for female names. They suggested that participants shift criteria between judging men and women, using the more liberal criterion for judging men. This "criterion-shift" account appeared problematic for a number of reasons. In this article, 3 experiments are reported that were designed to evaluate the criterion-shift account of the gender bias in the false-fame effect against a distribution-shift account. The results were consistent with the criterion-shift account, and they helped to define more precisely the situations in which people may be ready to shift their response criterion on an item-by-item basis. In addition, the results were incompatible with an interpretation of the criterion shift as an artifact of the experimental situation in the experiments reported by M. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

Sociology, Gender and Educational Aspirations: Girls and their Ambitions

This study helps develop an overall understanding as to why some students achieve where others don't. Debate on the effects of class on educational attainment is well documented and typically centres on the reproductive nature of class whilst studies of the effect of class on educational aspirations also predict outcomes that see education reinforcing and reproducing a student's class background.Despite a number of government initiatives to help raise higher education participation to 50 per cent by 2010, for the working class numbers have altered little. Using data from an ethnographic case study of a low-achieving girls school, the author explores aspirations and argues that whilst class is very powerful in explaining educational attainment, understanding educational aspirations is somewhat more complex. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to question and challenge popular assumptions surrounding class-based theory in making sense of girls' aspirations and to question the usefulness of the continued over reliance of such broad categorisations by both academics and policy makers