Subjects (36 male, 36 female), aged from fifteen to fifty-two years, performed a computer-based tracking task under one of six audience conditions in an experiment designed to investigate the effects of gender and social facilitation on performance. In addition to the computer task, each subject completed a fifteen-item questionnaire designed to identify levels of computer usage, computer-related anxiety, confidence and competence when using computers, and attitudes toward computers and computer users. Males performed significantly better than females, and a significant social facilitation effect was found. A significant Gender × Audience interaction was found, with females performing very much better in the presence of a female audience than alone or with a male audience. The implications for educational policy and practice are briefly discussed.

A health warning was presented to 89 female and 19 male students aged 17-36 years via three modalities or channels of communication: a "talking head" (video), an audiotape recording (audio), or a printed transcript (print). The verbal content of the message was identical in all three conditions. Participants' free recall, cued recall (recognition), and global recall of the message was then measured. On two separate dependent measures and a combined measure, recall was significantly (p < .005) better in both the audio and print conditions than in the video condition. No significant differences in recall were found between the audio and print conditions. These results, and those of earlier studies of modality effects on recall of information, are discussed in terms of self-pacing and distraction theories.