As a result the 4 year old thought it was ok for George to play with the dolls; the 6 year olds thought it was wrong and the 9 year old found it unusual but thought it was fine if that's what he wanted.
Therefore this shows that children's understanding of gender develops over time.
Another view, gender schema theory suggests that children play a more active role in their own gender development from an earlier age. A schema in cognitive psychology terms is a structure used to organise information about a particular type of object, person or situation.
People pair and match new information with schemas they have produced in the past. For example, by age two a child is able to label itself male or female, which reflects the development of a basic gender schema. The child then absorbs information from its own environment in order to increase its knowledge of maleness and femaleness and thereby to guide its own behaviour.
Through this the child identifies objects and activities associated with its own gender and ignore and dismiss the things that don't fit. For example: a three year old may dismiss objects that are not pink. However as they develop with age, so does their understanding and therefore their schemas increase in complexity and they become more relaxed.
An advantage of gender schema approach is that we can begin to trace stability and change in the child's gender-linked cognition and behaviour through tracking the child's development of schemas. I.e. it offers insight into why children seemed to attach to gender stereotypes, even though in some cases parents attempt to reduce or eliminate stereotyping. A schema controls what we pay attention to, what we want to know more about and explore, what we interact with, and what (and how) we remember.
The following study from (Martin and Halverson), showed 5-6 year olds pictures of sex consistent (a girl cooking) and sex- inconsistent behaviour and they found that children distorted the memories to fit with their schema (understanding).
Furthermore Kuhn et al (1978) also looked into sex stereotyping by asking children (2-3) about dolls. As a result they found strong stereotyping and they tended to give positive characteristics to their own gender opposed to the opposite sex. Therefore this shows that gender understanding exists form a very early age.
Cognitive psychologists need to be able to access children's thinking and behaviour and therefore much of their research has used interviews. Evidently looking at some of the theorists above it shows they favour structured interviews because of the higher reliability associated with this. For example: Gender Concept Interview, involves asking children questions about their own and others' gender (identity), and what their gender was in the past and may be in the future (stability). Furthermore, what their gender would be if they played with toys associated with the opposite sex (gender Constancy).
Moreover other cognitive psychologists favour quasi-experimental methods in their research. This involves boys and girls or children of different ages and comparing their performance of tasks that involve processing information about gender. These forms of study are quasi-experimental because the 'IV's (gender and age) are things that cannot be manipulated by the researcher. Evidently a true IV must be (for example the researcher cannot assign children to be male or female).
In a nutshell cognitive approach to gender is currently very influential, which tends to be descriptive rather than explanatory. It states that children acquire an understanding of gender and identifying- male/female at as early as 2 years old, although it does not explain why children select the categories they choose and the information for the schemas.
Whereas the social learning theory probably provides a better explanation of why the schemas develop as they do, through the reinforcement and modelling of male /female behaviour.
Even so cognitive research has proven successful With Slaby and Frey (1975) used structured interviews and found that children fell into three distinct groups which reflected the stages of gender development described by Kohlberg.
Also Boston and Levy (1991) used the quasi-experimental method, where he compared ‘girls and boys' ability to assemble sequences of pictures in correct order. These were activities 'typically' male or female, and the outcome suggests the children were better at sequencing the activities that corresponded stereotypically to their own gender. This proves that children have a more developed understanding of activities more relevant to them, which is consistent with gender schema theory. Clearly these studies state that boys and girls think differently. Although it does not allow us to make causal inferences about why.
Thus the cognitive approach encourages and recognizes the active role that children take in their own development. This is an advantage over social learning theory. They see children more passive recipients of influences from their environment.
The downside to this is that the cognitive approach may underestimate or neglect the role of external influences on the child's development. However both approaches are compatible with each other and, arguably, have been moving towards each other for some time.
Moreover another theory that would criticize the cognitive approach would be the biological approach. Although the cognitive approach leaves room for biological influences to play a role in gender development it has tended to neglect these. Consequently, there are aspects of gender development that the cognitive approach has difficulty explaining.
According to a nature view of psychosexual differentiation, prenatal exposure to androgen could influence the development of gender identity – the individual feelings of being a man or a woman.
In contrast the nurture position holds that we are psychosexually neutral at birth and the socialization is responsible for the development of gender identity.
Evidently, Money and Ehrhardt (1972) reported the case of 7 month old baby boy- one of a pair of twins-born in 1963 whose penis was removed due to a freak accident during an operation for circumcision which damaged his penis. The child was surgically reassigned as a girl at 22 months old and brought up according to the prevailing view at the time that we are psychosexually neutral at birth. This case entered the textbooks and informed medical opinions for several decades because Money reported that all was well and the child had adapted well as a girl with no problems. Although long term follow up of this case by Milton Diamond paints the opposite picture to the nature theory of psychosexual differentiation.
Diamond and Sigmundson's (1997) paper discovered that the above case was far from a success story of how environment can override nature in forming gender identity and described it as a “disaster”.
Despite being raised as a girl, the child never felt happy and at 12, she was given oestrogen therapy to complete the conversion to a woman. She grew breasts, but failed to be accepted or felt comfortable around women.
At the age of 14 the girl rebelled and confessed to her doctor: “ I suspected I was a boy since the second grade.” She stated that she never felt like a girl and always wanted to play with her brothers stuff. She was eventually given a mastectomy to remove the breasts and was given male hormones. By the age of 25, living live as a man, and married to a woman who already had children and was undergoing re constructive surgery to form a penis. Sadly though it was later discovered that he took his own life.
Evidence for in support of this position, can be found in the Diamond study carried out on male/female rats to find their Morphologic cerebral cortical asymmetry. (Diamond et al. 1984).
Their results indicate that specific regions in the right cerebral cortex of the young adult male rat are thicker than the corresponding regions on the left. The differences attain statistical significance in areas 17, 18a, and 39. In contrast, in the young adult female, specific regions in the left cortex are uniformly thicker than the right, though the differences are not statistically significant. However, if the female is ovariectomized at birth, by young adulthood the right-left cortical pattern is similar to that of the male. Showing there is a difference in male and female, beyond the environmental nurturing to change ones gender. (See table 1)
This would suggest that although schemas and thinking are important, genetics take a major role, all the dolls and pink clothing for years could not influence the gender role to change.
Looking at the bigger picture, cognitive approach may be successful in some parts of gender development, although it’s evident that other theories play big part as well.
References :
(Damon 1977)- Class Handout
Damon, Willian (1977)- The social world of the child. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Diamond and Sigmundson (1997).- . Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine Vol.151, No.3, pp.298-304
Diamond-http://www.marthalakecov.org/~building/neuro/diamond_brain_response.htm
Diamond-http://www.marthalakecov.org/~building/neuro/diamond_male_female.htm
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1966).- A cognitive-developmental analysis of children's sex- role concepts and attitudes. In E. E. Maccody (Ed.), The development of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1969).- Stage and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In D. A. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research. Chicago: RandMcNally.
Kuhn et al (1978)-
Leavy& Boston-Journal article by Gary D. Levy, Martha B. Boston; Journal of Genetics Psychology, Vol. 155, 1994
Martin and Halverson-http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.903210310/abstract
Money and Ehrhardt (1972)- Man & Woman, Boy & Girl. , John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Money-Horizon, "The boy who was turned into a girl", BBC, Transmitted in December 2000)
Slaby and Frey(1975)
Table 1
Statistical significance of differences between right and left cerebral cortical thickness in male and female rats ( S=statistically significant; NS=nonstatistically significant)
