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Is there coherence among the cognitive components of gender acquisition?

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Abstract

This study examined the relationships among five measures that assess various cognitive components of the child's acquisition of gender. At around 2 years of age, children were given a task assessing their ability to accurately label as “a boy” or “a girl” some head-and-shoulders pictures of boys and girls. At 4 years of age, these children were given tasks measuring (1) the degree to which they found gender a salient parameter of categorization, (2) the amount of gender-related knowledge they could display (SERLI-SRD), (3) the degree to which their preferences were gender-typed (SERLI-SRP) and (4) the accuracy of their memory for gender-typed information. There was no consistent pattern of relationship among the children's scores on these five tools for measuring gender acquisition. Our findings suggest that gender is a multidimensional construct in children's development, and thus these results challenge the undimensional manner in which gender is repeatedly addressed in developmental theory and research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oregon, USA

    Barbara E. Hort, Mary Driver Leinbach & Beverly I. Fagot

Authors
  1. Barbara E. Hort
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  2. Mary Driver Leinbach
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  3. Beverly I. Fagot
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Additional information

This research was funded in part by a federal biomedical research grant (No. 2507RR07080) awarded to the first author from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon, and by Grant No. RO1HD175751 from the National Institute of Child Development awarded to the third author.

We wish to thank Margo Lane, Rachel Robertson, Jacqui Oucalt, Laura Baker, Dale Roberts, and the teachers, parents, and assistants of the Child Research Laboratory at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, for their invaluable contribution to this research.

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Hort, B.E., Leinbach, M.D. & Fagot, B.I. Is there coherence among the cognitive components of gender acquisition?. Sex Roles 24, 195–207 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00288891

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