In the news
On the 19th of January 2012, I was on
BBC's Today
programme to talk about my latest
research:
Click here to play MP3 sound
file (This audio file is a more complete than the BBC audio
clip).
The Today
programme is the BBCs flagship news and current affairs programme broadcast weekdays
from 6am to 9am.
In
the Guardian: Women
and the maths problem.
A commentary by Helen Powell. The Guardian is one of the UK's major newspapers.
In
the Telegraph: It
is not just conservatives who shy away from science.
A
commentary by Ed West. The Telegraph is one of the UK's major newspapers.
In
the Yorkshire
Post: Will women and men ever add up to equals in
maths?
An article Sheena Hastings.
In
The Riverfront Times: If Girls Think Math is
Hard, Researchers Find Science is Even Harder
A commentary
by Aimee Levitt.
In
the The
Chronicle of Higher Education: Stereotypes do not explain
gender differences in math, study argues.
A commentary by Dan
Berrett. The Chronicle is a large news source for academia in the
USA.
On ScienceDaily:
'Women
Worse at Math Than Men' Explanation Scientifically Incorrect,
Experts Say..
ScienceDaily is a popular science news website
founded by science writer Dan Hogan in 1995.
On Psych
Central:
Stereotypes of women do not explain
behavior.
A commentary by Dr. Rick Nauert.
In Heise
Online: Warum erzielen Frauen weniger Spitzenleistungen in
der Mathematik? [Why are there fewer top achievements in
Mathematics by women?]
A commentary by Florian Rötzer. Heise Online is
a popular German technology magazine.
On Leiweb: Attualità anche le donne hanno i numeri.
Commentary in Italian.
You can watch a short 6 minute YouTube video about our research
here:
The summary (abstract) of the paper Can stereotype threat
explain the gender gap in mathematics performance and achievement?:
Men and women score similarly in most areas of mathematics, but a gap favoring men is consistently found at the high end of performance. One explanation for this gap, stereotype threat, was first proposed by Spencer, Steele, and Quinn (1999) and has received much attention. We discuss merits and shortcomings of this study and review replication attempts. Only 55% of the articles with experimental designs that could have replicated the original results did so. But half of these were confounded by statistical adjustment of preexisting mathematics exam scores. Of the unconfounded experiments, only 30% replicated the original. A meta-analysis of these effects confirmed that only the group of studies with adjusted mathematics scores displayed the stereotype threat effect. We conclude that although stereotype threat may affect some women, the existing state of knowledge does not support the current level of enthusiasm for this as a mechanism underlying the gender gap in mathematics. We argue there are many reasons to close this gap, and that too much weight on the stereotype explanation may hamper research and implementation of effective interventions.
Research interests
Together with colleagues and students, I study different aspects of our thinking. Most of this work focuses on cognition and attention, but also includes health and social psychology. We use a number of different methods (behavioural and neuroscientific), and study different groups of people, including children. Most of my past and present research has been funded with grants from the NIH, German Science Foundation (DFG), Max-Planck-Society, James S. McDonnell Foundation, British Academy, and Nuffield Foundation, and I would like to thank the funding organisations and collaborators for their support. In the publication section, you can find a variety of articles that resulted from these grants.
Currently, we use primarily mental chronometry to characterise how children and adults coordinate cognitive processes, and how cognitive processes determine short term and longer term decision making. Example questions are: How do people manage to multi-task, and why are some people better at it than others? How do people deal with conflicting information? Do cognitive processes in men and women differ? What are the implications of gender differences in thinking for important decisions, such as career planning? How can gender differences in thought and behaviour be explained using evolutionary models? How do animal and human cognitive abilities compare? How do cognitive abilities develop in children and teenagers? How does people's capacity to control themselves help them to live more healthily? What is the relationship between thinking style and personality?
Altogether, the work in my lab is highly
interdisciplinary and I continue to collaborate with colleagues around
the world in different areas of psychology, neuroscience, and computer
science. If you are interested in any aspect of this research, if you
would like to collaborate, or if you would like to study at the
University of Leeds (e.g., for a MSc or PhD), please do not hesitate
to email me.
Current students involved in research projects
Kara Gray, Caroline Allen, Amy Fretten, Georgina Cook, Natalie Retter, Emily Inston, Lewis O'Sullivan, Emma Johnstone.CV
| Education | |
| 1996-1998 | PhD. Psychology Summa Cum Laude, Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research and Ludwig Maximilians University (Munich, Germany) |
| Thesis: The role of feature integration in action planning | |
| Adviser: Bernhard Hommel | |
| 1989-1993 | M.A. Psychology, University of Groningen (The Netherlands) |
| Thesis: Natural language processing in neural networks | |
| Advisers: Gerhard Dalenoort and Hans Strohner | |
| Academic institutions | |
| 2007-present | University of Leeds (UK) |
| 2006-2007 | University of the West of England (UK) |
| 1998-2006 | Washington University in St.Louis (USA) |
| 1996-1998 | Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research (Munich, Germany) |
| 1993-1995 | University of Bielefeld (Germany) |
| Current administrative roles |
| - Member of the University of Leeds Equality and Diversity Committee |
| - Member of the Faculty Research Ethics Committee |
| - Chair of Departmental Ethics Committee |
Publications
Can stereotype threat explain the gender gap in mathematics performance and achievement?
Stoet, G. & Geary, D. C. (2012). Review of General Psychology.
[watch
video]. Published
as Online
First version (paper print forthcoming).
The role of executive control in tool use (commentary)
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (in press). Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Sex differences in search and gathering skills
Stoet, G. (2011). Evolution and Human Behavior, 32, 416-422.
[download pdf]
Task switching abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder
Stoet, G. & López, B. (2011). European Journal of
Developmental Psychology, 8, 244-260.
[download pdf]
PsyToolkit - A software package for programming psychological experiments using Linux
Stoet, G. (2010). Behavior Research Methods, 42(4), 1096-1104.
[download
pdf]
Sex differences in the processing of flankers
Stoet, G. (2010). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63 (4), 633-638.
[download pdf]
Neural correlates of executive control functions in the monkey
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2009). Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 228-234.
[download pdf]
Modification of response time variability in a decision-making task
Stoet, G., Ruge, H., & Snyder, L.H. (2008). Neuroreport, 19, 1321-1324.
[download pdf]
Dyslexia and attentional shifting
Stoet, G., Markey, H., & López, B. (2007). Neuroscience Letters, 427, 61-65.
[download pdf]
Task-switching in human and non-human primates: Understanding
rule encoding and control from behavior to single neurons
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2007).
In S.A. Bunge and
J.D. Wallis (Eds.), pp. 227-254. The Neuroscience of Rule-Guided
Behavior. Oxford University Press.
Extensive practice does not eliminate human switch
costs
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2007). Cognitive, Affective, &
Behavioral Neuroscience, 7(3),
192-197.
[download
pdf]
Correlates of stimulus-response congruence in posterior parietal
cortex (PPC)
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2007). Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 194-203. [see cover
right]
[download
pdf]
Effects of the NMDA antagonist ketamine on task-switching
performance: evidence for specific impairments of executive
control
Stoet, G. & Snyder,
L.H. (2006). Neuropsychopharmacology, 31,
1675-1681.
[download
pdf]
Attentional set mixing: effects on target selection and
selective response activation
Ruge, H., Stoet, G., & Naumann
E. (2006). Psychophysiology, 43,
413-421.
[download
pdf]
Single neurons in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of monkeys
encode cognitive set
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2004). Neuron,
42,
1003-1012.
[download
pdf]
Click
here to read David J. Freedman's introduction to this publication
in the same issue of Neuron.
Executive control and task-switching in monkeys
Stoet,
G. & Snyder, L.H. (2003). Neuropsychologia, 41,
1357-1364.
[download
pdf]
Task preparation in macaque monkeys (Macaca
mulatta)
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2003). Animal
Cognition, 6,
121-130
[download
pdf]
Interaction between feature binding in perception and
action
Stoet, G. & Hommel, B. (2002). In W.Prinz & B.Hommel
(Eds.). Common mechanisms in perception and action: Attention and
Performance, Vol. XIX (pp. 538-552). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
[download
pdf]
Action planning and the temporal binding of response
codes
Stoet, G. & Hommel, B. (1999). Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25,
1625-1640.
[download
pdf]
The role of feature integration in action
Stoet,
G. (1998). Dissertation. Munich, Germany.
Cognitive Compositionality: An Activation and Evaluation
Hypothesis
Strohner, H. & Stoet, G. (1999). In M.K. Hiraga,
C. Sinha & S.Wilcox (Eds.), Cultural, Psychological and Typological
Issues in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 195-209). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Co.
Kognitive Modellierung semantischer
Kompositionalität
Strohner, H. & Stoet,
G. (1994). Sprache und Datenverarbeitung, 18, 45-64.
Interferenzprozesse bei Adjektiv-Nomen-Kompositionen
Strohner, H. & Stoet, G. (1996). Sind geschälte Äpfel
eher weiß als rund? In C.Habel, S.Kanngießer &
G.Rickheit (Eds.), Perspektiven der Kognitiven Linguistik:Modelle
und Methoden (pp. 233-255). Opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag.
Selection of abstracts
Sex differences in visual search performance seem incompatible
with the hunter/gatherer hypothesis
Stoet, G. (2010).
Annual
Meeting of the Psychonomic Society. St.Louis (USA).
Using Linux for programming and running cognitive experiments and questionnaires
Stoet, G. (2010).
Annual Meeting of the Society for
Computers in Psychology. St.Louis (USA).
Comparing task-switching costs in children and adults - methodological
issues and data
Stoet, G. (2010).
Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Section
of the British Psychological Society. Cardiff.
Response time variability in choice response time tasks and
tapping tasks correlates positively
Stoet, G. & Gray,
K.(2010).
Joint Conference of the EPS and SEPEX. Granada.
Task switching, inhibition, and executive control in children
with autism
Stoet, G. & López, B. (2010).
Joint
Conference of the EPS and SEPEX. Granada.
Task switching in children with autism
López, B. &
Stoet, G. (2008).
International Meeting for Autism Research
(IMFAR). London.
Human performance in repetitive tasks
Stoet, G.,
Ruge. H. & Snyder, L.H. (2007).
Joint meeting of the EPS and
Psychonomics Society. Edinburgh.
Switch costs in humans persist even after extensive
training.
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2005).
Annual meeting of
the Psychonomic Society. Toronto.
A model of effects of ketamine, a NMDA glutamatergic antagonist,
on executive control in monkeys.
Stoet, G. & Snyder,
L.H. (2005). Schizophrenia Bulletin, 31(2), 311-311.
International
Congress on Schizophrenia Research (ICOSR). Savannah.
Effects of conflicting stimuli on neurons in posterior parietal
cortex (PPC).
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2004).
Annual
meeting of the Society For Neuroscience. San Diego.
Effects of task interference on neurons in the posterior
parietal cortex (PPC).
Stoet, G. & Snyder, L.H. (2004).
Annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Minneapolis.
Additive factor logic used to reveal monkey preparation
strategy in a task-switching paradigm.
Stoet, G. & Snyder,
L.H. (2003).
Annual meeting of the Psychonomic
Society. Vancouver.
Software
PsyToolkit is an open-source software package
for creating and running psychological experiments using the Linux
operating system. I have developed this software over a period of more
than 5 years, and it is compatible with a range of hardware (e.g.,
Cedrus and IOLab response pads, various digital input/output
boards). Currently, PsyToolkit is used around the world in many
different settings, from research laboratories to applied
psychological settings. Click
here to learn more about the software.
PsyToolkit can also be used for teaching with any
type of computer platform. There is an online set of lessons with
demonstrations of a number of popular paradigms in cognitive
psychology, including visual search, stimulus-response compatibility,
attentional cuing, inhibition of return, attentional blink, Fitts's
Law, and mental rotation. One of the main advantages of the lessons is
that students can study them from home, because all software being
used is free. The demonstrations run on all computer platforms as Java
applications (that is, not just on
Linux). Click here to
directly go to the lessons.
Publications about PsyToolkit:
PsyToolkit - A software package for programming psychological
experiments using Linux
Stoet, G. (2010). Behavior Research Methods, 42(4), 1096-1104.
[download
pdf]
PsyToolkit Manual
Stoet, G. (2010). Leeds University, Leeds.
[download pdf]
PsyToolkit
Stoet, G. (2011). Newsletter of the Higher
Education Academy, 60,
14.
[download
pdf of whole issue, contribution is on page 14]
Personal
In my spare time, I am active in a number of local
and national societies. Further, I enjoy a variety of completely
different things, including computer programming, travel, hiking, and
watching Coronation Street.