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GENDER- the cognitive explanations of gender development - Coggle Diagram
GENDER- the cognitive explanations of gender development
cognitive explanations=
suggests childrens underdtanding of gender actively develops directly seeking out learning experiences and intellectually organising concepts, rather than passively responsing to stimuli (behaviourism) or observation (SLT)
Kohlberg's theory of gender development
gender develops in a series of stages through a process of maturation (brain development), socialisation (learning cultural norms from adults and peers) and lessening egocenturism (starting to see from other people's perspective)
STAGE 1- GENDER IDENTITY/LABELLING= 2-3 y/os aware of their own gender as b/g. can identify other peoples gender but arent aware of its permenance.
STAGE 2- GENDER STABILITY- 4-5 y/os aware of own gender as fixed over time. get confused by non normative appearance. roles in others
STAGE 3- GENDER CONSISITENCY- 5 years old. recognise that everyones gender is consistent over time despite changes in hair/clothes/context
after consistency children actively look for and imitate the same gendered individuals. develop an understanding of gender within this experience
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POSITIVE- children were interviewed to assess their stage of gender development. 23 boys and 32 girls ages 2- 5.5 y/o. children watched film with male an female model performing the same activity on either side of the screen. using a one way mirror, researchers recorded how long each child focused on each model. they found childrens stage of gender development was associated with age and children in the constancy stage spent lomger looking at the same sex model, particularly boys. this suggests children do have pbservable stages of gender development as predicted by K and children do look to same sex models for gener self-socialisation
gender schema theory
Martin and Halverson created GST suggesting gender schemas are mental representations of what sex is and what is stereotypically male and female behaviour which informs our own behavioour and what is eoected from others
suggested children reach gender identity around 2-3 years- stage suggested by GST that children start to actively develop their gender schemas, looking to their environment for examplles of gendered behaviour and using this to inform their own actions. GST suggested this happens earlier than Kohlberg thought
ingroups= the gender that the child belongs to and children focus more and devlop a stronger understanding of stereotyped behaviour for their genderbefore a deeper underdtanding of the outgroup- the opposite sex. this is reinforced by adult behaviour such as giving gendered toys, praising gendered behaviour and language like "you dont want boys toys"
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POSITIVE- Martin and Halverston. children between 5 and 6 were shown pictures of either men or women doing typically mela or typically female activitues. 1 wek later they were asked to recall the activitues and the sex of the person in the picture. it was found in recall that the chidren switched the sex to match what was socially acceptable. this suggests that children have internal schemas of gendered bejaviour which can act as default expectations influencing memory recall.
POSITIVE FOR GST NEGATIVE FOR KOHLBERG- Martin and Little- assessed which stage of Ks gender development children were in. then they judged these childrens preference for sex-typed toya, knowledge of sex typed clothing and preference for novel itens thatt the experimenter said were "for boys" or "for girls".
found that even the youngest had strong sex typed preferences and stereotyped knowledge of clothes and toys before children reached the gender constancy stage. this suggests that gender stererotypes and gendered behaviour form early as predicted by GST. while the existence of Ks stages is supported, its wrong to suggest that prefeences only start when they reach the gender constacy stage.
general evaluations for cognitive explanations of gender development
NEGATIVE- male vervet monkeys were signofocantly more likely to play with masculine toys and females with feminine toys without prior experience. suggests preference for gendered objects is innate and could have an evolutionary basis.
NEGATIVE- use of very young children who cant properly communicate is problematic because you have to use inferenced to explain thei behaviour which is problematic because theyre subjective.