Developmental differences in young children's sex-typing : Automatic versus reflective processing

[[abstract]]To investigate social cognitive factors in early sex-role development, this study examined young children's gender-related judgments of toy appropriateness under speeded and delayed response conditions. Subjects were 55 boys and 59 girls, aged 3, 5, and 7. Ninety-two photographs of common toys were independently rated as mainly for girls, mainly for boys, or neutral. In the categorization condition, children stated who usually played with the toy shown. In the immediate-response condition, subjects were further asked to respond as quickly as possible after the toy photograph was presented. In the delayed-response condition, subjects waited for a signal, that was presented after a 2.8-second delay, before answering. During the waiting period, children were instructed to "think hard about who usually plays with this toy." Results revealed that children's flexibility, or judgment of a toy as neutral, to neutral toy stimuli increased with age. In contrast, flexibility with respect to sex-typed toys was generally low; some increase in flexibility was shown from age 3 to age 5, followed by a decline in flexibility with respect to feminine toys at age 7. Children's knowledge of same-sex stereotypes was high from age 3, while opposite-sex knowledge was initially low and increased with age more slowly for boys than for girls. By age 7, however, stereotype knowledge was uniformly high in all children