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Abstract:
Do individuals who have chosen careers in two disciplines
which presumably rely on different cognitive abilities also differ
in their performance on basic cognitive tasks which reflect those
same capabilities? The performance of a mixed-gender group of
senior faculty in English and in Chemistry were compared on two
working memory tasks: the Sternberg STM scanning task and the
Shepard & Cooper mental rotation task. The Sternberg task was
assumed to be a reasonable index of verbal WM while the Shepard
& Cooper mental rotation task was assumed to provide a
reasonable measure of the type of visuospatial WM processes which
are critical to success in Chemistry. Faculty members in the
Departments of English and Chemistry did not differ reliably in RT
and in accuracy to scan the contents of STM as measured by the
Sternberg task. Members of the Chemistry Department were reliably
quicker and more accurate than their counterparts in the English
Department at manipulating visuospatial data as measured by the
Shepard & Cooper task. These data may be interpreted in several
ways. Individuals may be lead to specific career choices because of
initial differences in innate talents, or practice at verbal or
visuospatial tasks may differentially develop these same
componential skills in individuals.
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