1. Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
Cognitive Style Predicts Entry into Physical Sciences and Humanities: Questionnaire and performance tests of empathy and systemizing
Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
2007
VIDEO 1
“This presentation contains copyrighted material under the educational fair use exemption to the U.S. copyright law”

2. I. Background A. Meet the researchers
1. Jac Billington a cognitive neuroscientist with the Royal Holloway Univ in London.
2. Sally Wheelwrigth is with the Autism Research Center. She most recently is working on the use of fMRI to understand autsim.

3. I. Background 3. Simon Baron-Cohen
a. Yes he is related to that other Baron-Cohen
b. Famous for his work on autism.
c. He is also the lead author on the next study we will be doing that is based on the eyes test for autism
d. He is also famous for his use of the Sally-Anne test for autism and theory of mind

4. Girls playing with blocks commercial
I. Background
B. What is autism –
1. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction.
2. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior or interests
a. Repeated movements
b. Interests in sameness or making or looking at patterns
3. 4 times as likely in males – Hans Asperger referred to autism as an extreme of the male mind.
Baron-Cohen Ted Talk
Girls playing with blocks commercial

5. I. Background C. Men Vs. Women in math and sciences
1. Men out number women in careers requiring scientific style of thinking
2. Women are more prevalent in careers requiring social skills
3. Only 10% of top scientific careers held by women
4. So this begs the question, are men better at science or is there some other factor at work here? Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright believe it may be due to the cognitive psych

6. I. Background
D. Baron-Cohen hypothesized that the difference may be due to cognitive styles of males who tend to be more systemizing (S)and females who tend to be more empathizing (E)
1. Empathizing focuses on interacting in the real world.
a. Includes the drive and ability to identify another’s mental state and respond ot these with a range of appropriate emotions
b. Thus it includes both a cognitive and affective component.
c. The cognitive component has often been referred to as a Theory of Mind.

7. I. Background
2. Systemizing is defined as the drive and ability to analyse the rules underlying a system in order to predict its behavior.
a. Systems are found across 5 domains
b. All systems include the same tripartite (3-part) system – INPUT – OPERATION – OUTPUT.
3. The researches hypothesize that females have a stronger drive to empathize, whilst males have a stronger drive to systemize (on average)

8. II. Aims and Hypothesis
A. Hypothesis = irrespective of gender, if an individual’s systemizing score is higher than his/her empathizing score (S>E) this leads them to fields that require an analytic style to deal with rule-based phenomena, and vice versa
B.Aims – four main research questions
1. To retest the sex ratio in physical sciences and humanities.
2. To test if males show the profile of S>E, and if females show the profile of E>S, using both performance and questionnaire assessment.

9. II. Aims and Hypothesis
3. To test if physical science students show the profile of S>E, and if humanities students show the profile of E>S, using both performance and questionnaire assessment.
4. To test if cognitive style (S>E or E>S) is a better predictor than sex in explaining enrolment into physical science vs. humanities.
5. Two other questions were tested but were not part of the true aims of the study
Are males better at the FC-EFT test and are females better at the eyes test?
Are science students better at the FC-EFT and are humanities students better at the eyes test?

10. III. Methods A. Sample 1. 415 students 2. Degree classification
212 female/203 male
Self-selecting sample- responded to an or advertisement within the University offering free entry into a raffle
Any members of the sample who had a previous history of mental illness were excluded from the sample.
2. Degree classification
a. Physical science = math, physics, and chemistry
b. Humanities = classics, languages and drama

11. Cue 1: According to the authors why is it important that we don’t ignore this gender difference in the sciences?
CUE 2: List the 5 domains of systemizing from the article.
CUE 3: Do you see yourself as more of an E or an S.
CUE 4: List two other majors indicated in the study that would qualify under each of these categories.
CUE 5: What do you think explains the difference between the number of males and females in the hard sciences?
CUE 6: Summarize this video in 3 bullet points
CUE 7: How is this study an example of the Individual Differences Approach [2]

12. Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
Cognitive Style Predicts Entry into Physical Sciences and Humanities: Questionnaire and performance tests of empathy and systemizing
Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
2007
VIDEO 2
“This presentation contains copyrighted material under the educational fair use exemption to the U.S. copyright law”

13. III. Methods B. Type of experiment C. Variables by aim
1. Natural Experiment (the IV’s are naturally occurring)
2. Used Self-Report questionnaires and psychometric tests
3. Design – Independent measures design/Snapshot
C. Variables by aim
1. IV is gender and DV is # or % in science vs humanities
2. IV is gender and DV is % of ES/S vs EE/E
3. IV is major and DV is % of ES/S vs EE/E

14. III. Methods D. Procedure & Tasks
4. IV is brain type and DV is degree choice
a. Sub test aim IV is a gender DV is scores on Eyes and FC-EFT
b. IV is major and DV is scores on Eyes and FC-EFT
D. Procedure & Tasks
1. Questionnaires and performance task online (secure university website) using SELF REPORT
2. Provide basic info: (sex, date of birth, handedness, diagnoses of medical condition, educational level/degree
3. Complete in any order
4. Multiple sessions allowed, each test only once

15. III. Methods E. Questionnaires/Apparatus
1. SQ-R: used to determine the participants systemizing quotient (created for this study by the authors ) which was a modified version that had better reliability/validity and gender neutral items.
a. Consists of 75 items
b. score 0-150
2. EQ: used to determine the empathizing quotient of the participant (also created for this study)
40 items
score 0-80

16. III. Methods
3. Brain Type – a measure of the relationship between SQ-R to the EQ, yields 5 brain types
a. Type E: empathizing is stronger than systemizing (female brain)
b. Type S: systemizing is stronger than empathizing (male brain)
c. Type B: equally strong in systemizing and empathizing (balanced)
d. Extreme Empathizing EE/Extreme Systemizing ES= Lowest and highest 2.5 % of population
F. Tasks
1. The FC-EFT forced choice version of the Embedded Figures (done online)
a. Select one of two possible answers (thus forced choice)

17. III. Methods b. 12 pairs of diagrams
c. find the small black and white shape in one of the two larger, more complex, diagrams
d. Must answer each in 50 sec
e. 1 point fore each correct + an additional point if score was in the fastest 25% so scores range from for FC –EFT

18. III. Methods
2. The Eyes Test – a four choice task where Ps must look at a pair of eyes and choose which of the 4 words best describes what the individual is thinking. Must answer in 20 sec
You will take this test online during the next study by Baron-Cohen

19. CUE 8: Give 2 strengths and 2 weakness of the natural experiment method
CUE 9: Give a sample question from each questionnaire. (See study)
CUE 10: What are the advantages and disadvantages of completing the self-report questionnaires and tasks at home?
Cue 11: Write 5 T/F type questions for this video (3 must be false and be accompanied by the correct answer)
Cue 12: What type of alternative method would you feel most comfortable using to study the same topic? Which alternative method would be most difficult to use?

20. Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
Cognitive Style Predicts Entry into Physical Sciences and Humanities: Questionnaire and performance tests of empathy and systemizing
Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
2007
VIDEO 3
“This presentation contains copyrighted material under the educational fair use exemption to the U.S. copyright law”

21. IV. Results A. Aim Academic disciplines
% of physical science (male) 160/268 male as compared to 108/268
% of humanities (female) 104/147 versus 43/147 for males
3. Participants categorised by degree subject and sex are shown in Table 1 replicated on the next slide.
4. So the results seem to support AIM 1

22. Percentage of participants studying each degree category, by sex
% of total N
Female
Physical
Humanities
Total
108
104
212
26.0%
25.1%
51.1%
Male
160 43
203
38.6%
10.4%
48.9%
268
147
415
64.6%
35.4%
100.0%

23. IV. Results B. Questionnaire Results
GENDER
DEGREE
TEST
MEAN
Female
Physical
SQ-R EQ
FC-EFT
Eyes Test
61.23
43.48
15.05
32.86
Humanities
51.54
46.82
14.07
35.69
Male
65.46
35.59
15.03
31.83
58.65
40.56
14.14
33.79
B. Questionnaire Results
1. Questionnaire results: significant relationship between sex and cognitive style indicated by brain type
2. EQ and SQ-R and performance scores categorised by sex and degree subject are shown in Table 2 to the left.

24. IV. Results C. Performance tests
3. 66% of males: either Type S or Extreme Type S compared to 28.8% of females
% of females: Type E or Extreme Type E, compared to 10.3% of males, see Fig. 3
5. So AIM 2 seems to be supported
C. Performance tests
1. partially reflected this finding with females scoring significantly higher than males on the Eyes Test (t=−2.85).
2. No significant sex difference on the FC-EFT.
3. Overall both questionnaire and performance measures suggest there is evidence for an E>S profile in females and an S>E profile in males.

25. Fig. 3. Percentage of males and females displaying each brain type.

26. IV. Results D. AIM 3 comparing the degrees
1. Physical science students, 56.3% showed either an Extreme Type S or Type S profile compared to 29.9% of humanities students.
% of humanities students obtained an Extreme Type E or a Type E profile, only 14.2% of physical scientists obtained this profile, see Fig. 4.
3. Physical scientists performed better than humanities students on the FC-EFT (t=3.42, df=361, p=0.001) and worse than the humanities students on the Eyes task (t=−3.96, df=413, p=0.001).
4. So AIM 3 seems to be supported

27. Fig. 4. Percentage of physical scientists and humanities students displaying each brain type.

28. IV. Results
E. AIM 4 – is S-E profile a better predictor of degree choice?
1. S>E profile for physical science students as a group & E>S profile for humanities students as a group, regardless of sex
2. The authors used logistic regression a statistical technique for making predictions
% of predictions were accurate
4. The Brain type was the strongest predictor followed by FC-EFT performance and then Eyes Test performance
5. Sex was the least accurate predictor.

29. Cue 13: Write down one comparative statistic to support each aim
Cue 14: All of the data collected in this experiment was quantitative, what is 1 strength and 1 weakness of quantitative data
Cue 15: What piece of qualitative data would you have collected to make this experiment better?

30. Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
Cognitive Style Predicts Entry into Physical Sciences and Humanities: Questionnaire and performance tests of empathy and systemizing
Billington, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright
2007
VIDEO 4
“This presentation contains copyrighted material under the educational fair use exemption to the U.S. copyright law”

31. V. Conclusions
A. As predicted, questionnaire scores for both the EQ and the SQ showed significant sex differences
1. On average, males had higher S-scores, both relative to their E-scores and relative to female S-cores.
2. Females opposite cognitive profile
B. Most important: S and weaker E was associated with physical sciences than humanities
1. Extremely high S-scores only seen in male physical scientists
2. Extremely low S-scores were only seen in female humanities students
3. Biological sex is not a strong determinant of academic career choice

32. V. Conclusions C. Sex differences in the Work Place
1. sex ratio of certain occupations or degree subjects may actually reflect differences in E & S
2. People with low S-cores scores (predominantly females) may be less likely to pursue scientific academic disciplines
D. In the classroom
1. Can the classroom be changed to encourage more girls to adopt an S style.

33. V. Conclusions
2. One study on tool use among 3 y/o children showed boys were better at tool use initially. However, once girls were given the proper scaffolding they preformed equally as well.
3. The implication is that we should perhaps redesign the way we teach science/math classes that require an S style.
E. Perhaps then we should focus on brain type discrepancy between S &E, not sex

34. VI. Evaluation A. Weaknesses
1. Self-report questionnaires always raise the question of the lack of reliability
2. Sample took surveys at home, are researchers sure the person who signed up took the survey? Could they have not taken it seriously since they were at home.
2 Sample selection process
a. Self-selecting samples raise questions of generalizability
b. The fact that they were offered a prize may create demand characteristics
c. No data other than gender and degree choice were provided so we do not know if the survey was generalizable to other races, SES categories etc.

35. VI. Evaluation B. Strengths
d. They were only contacted within the University system, will they generalize to other Universities or to the population as a whole?
B. Strengths
1. Each of the questionnaires were checked for validity as compared to other readily available instruments
2. Large sample with approximately 50/50 male and female
3. Self-report data collected at home at their own leisure – could lead to more honest and accurate responses

36. VI. Evaluation C. Issues and Debates
1. Nature v. Nurture – are we more likely to be S/E from birth?
2. Reductionism vs Holism – is explaining degree choice by S/E style too reductionist?
3. Idiographic vs Nomothetic. – This study attempts to broadly cast people as either E or S, thus it is nomothetic which it means it may not take individual differences into account.
D. Usefulness of Psychology in Everyday Life (useful)
1. provides and explanation for gender differences in colleges
2. High S is equated with autism. This study paved the way for further studies and theories on the role of S on autism

37. Cue 16 Rank the 4 studies from this unit on usefulness
Cue 16 Rank the 4 studies from this unit on usefulness. Explain your rankings
Cue 17: Rank the 4 studies from this unit on Ethics (from good to bad). Explain your rankings
Cue 18: Summarize this study completely in 5-8 bullet points.