- 2000 Symposium Abstracts
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Liberal or Conservative? How political views are divided.
CHRISTOPHER YEE. duPont Manual High School, 120 West Lee Street, Louisville,
Kentucky 40208.
The labels of "liberal" and "conservative"
have long been used to indicate, whether positively or negatively, the
political standing of an individual or group. Those under the labels
supposedly stand for different things; however, more people today seem
to support the standings of either side. This study was conducted
to test the degree of difference between the views of liberals and the
views of conservative. It was hypothesized that 'liberal' and 'conservative'
views would tend to overlap between those who consider themselves to be
one or the other.
To test this hypothesis, a survey was created
to gather information on the political positions of a group of people.
The questions were made based on knowledge of politically and socially
sensitive issues, and the participants answers would determine how liberal
or conservative they are. The questions were each given a point value,
and each had a "liberal" response and a "conservative" response.
A more negative point value would be more liberal, while a more positive
value would be more conservative.
Judging from the results of the survey, the
hypothesis is supported. Self-proclaimed liberals and conservatives
both agreed with the majority of the views that they "should have", although
they also agreed with many stances held by the opposite side. On
average, the answers of both liberals and conservatives reflected an opposite
view more than 25 per cent of the time.
Stereotype threat among female high school students: Does it impact
performance in mathematics? NEVILLE G. RYANT, duPont Manual High
School, 120 West Lee Street, Louisville, KY 40208.
Are female high school students involved in
studies of mathematics and the sciences vulnerable to stereotype threat?
To answer this question participants were placed either under a neutral,
non-threatening or a stereotypically threatening condition before being
asked to take a mathematics portion of the GRE. Additionally, participants
performed a word completion task in order to determine whether cognitive
activation of stereotypical constructs had, indeed, occurred. To
participants in the non--threatening condition, six neutral commercials
were shown while participants under the threatening condition were shown
four neutral commercials and two commercials containing negative stereotypes
of women. The experiment found no evidence of a significant negative
impact on performance in either males or females when exposed to the stereotype
containing commercials. However, results of the word completion task
indicated that cognitive activation of stereotypical constructs occurred
when participants were exposed to the stereotypical commercials.
Thus, it was concluded that while the threatening condition activated stereotypical
constructs, female participants did not experience the condition of stereotype
threat. The lack of confirmation of stereotype threat was attributed
in part to the variability inherent to such an exceedingly small sample
size. As well, it was determined that the difficulty of the mathematics
section used may not have been great enough to place participants in a
position where they were at risk of confirming negative stereotypes.
Internet Addiction: A Survey of High School Students. ROBERT
BERN, duPont Manual High School, 120 West Lee Street, Louisville, KY 40208.
The Internet is a new form of communication
that is receiving a lot of attention through the media. The Internet
is highly beneficial in research and resources. However, recent studies
have shown that the Internet can also be addictive. A group of volunteer
students were asked to fill out a survey that asked questions regarding
the Internet. The first half of the survey collected demographic
information such as age, magnet program and experience level. The
second half of the survey asked twenty Internet usage-related questions,
with answers ranging one to five based on an answer key. The answers
on the second half were totaled and compared to the level of risk chart.
According to the chart, 13 of the 139 students surveyed were at the Warning
level and none were in the High Risk level (the rest were in the Low Risk
level). The data was also analyzed based on demographic information.
It was found that the female average score (30.965) was higher than the
male average score (29.018). The data also supports that the
students in the Communication/Media Arts and Visual Arts magnets had
higher scores (33.5 and 31.4, respectively) than the other magnets: Math/Science/Technology
(30.4), High School
University (29.7), Youth Performing Arts School (28.2).
The effect of multilingualism on the learning of a new language.
NGOCUYEN V. NGUYEN, duPont Manual High School, 120 West Lee Street, Louisville,
KY 40208.
Long-term memory and short-term memory are
essential to learning. Learning of anything, including languages
would be impossible without the existence of memory. The chief center
for language is located on the left side of the brain. Multilingualism
is the ability to read, write, speak fluently and understand more than
one language. To achieve this, a person doesn't necessarily have
to learn both languages at birth. The purpose of this experiment
is to test the kind of effect multilingualism would have on the progress
of a person learning a new language. The hypothesis that multilingual
(bilingual) individuals would do better than monolingual individuals in
the progress of acquiring a foreign language were not supported.
Subjects at Advance French 11 level were asked to complete a written examination.
Scores from each test will reveal the individual competency in the language.
Even though the results showed that the average score for bilinguals were
higher than the average score for monolinguals, the result did not support
the hypothesis completely. The null hypothesis was not rejected,
because the T-test showed that the differences were insignificant.
Racial Awareness Between Generations. JENNIFER E. GLASS, duPont
Manual High School, 120 West Lee Street, Louisville, KY 40208.
This project was completed in hopes of finding
a common theme between generations on the subject of racial awareness.
There has always been racism in America. Slaves got their freedom
in 1865 with the end of the Civil War and segregation was ended in 1954
by Brown vs. Board of Education, but even after these attempts at
equality, many Americans believe that racism is still present in the United
States. The hope is that each generation is becoming less racist
than the last. Many people believe that the way to do this is to
teach the younger generation not to notice race-that everyone is the same.
This experiment involved 75 human subjects, 25 from each of three age groups.
The subjects were asked to describe several pictures, some of which were
humans of different races. The responses were recorded on a survey
form where I could distinguish between those who mentioned race and those
who did not. The data was compiled and conclusions were drawn.
The Effect of a Fragrance on Short Term Memory in Senior Citizens.
SHANEN FUCHS. Manual High School, 120 W. Lee St., Louisville, KY. 40208.
The sense of smell, or olfaction, is used
when perceiving substances through the stimulation of nerves in the nasal
cavity by the particles that are given off by that substance. Some
olfactory areas of the brain are directly connected to the limbic system,
which is responsible for evoking emotions and forming memories. Could
a fragrance help a person to remember more information than that person
normally would?
Ten senior citizens ages 70 to 92 were gathered
in a room that had no smell and were asked to look at a list of 15 food
items for 30 seconds. The subjects were then asked to recall as many
words as they could. Another group of ten senior citizens in the
same age range was placed in a room that was scented with an apple fragrance
and was asked to look over the same list of fifteen words. This group
was also asked to recall as many items as possible and the results were
recorded.
The data showed that the people that were
in the room with the fragrance remembered an average of only five tenths
more items than those who were in the room with no fragrance remembered.
Because of such a small difference, the t-test results showed that the
data was insignificant and therefore, the hypothesis is not supported by
the data.
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created: 29 January 2001