gender schema

Schemas are mental constructs that develop via experiances though some are present at birth in a present form and are used by our cognitive system to organise knowledge around particular topics. 

Martin and Halverson said that children actively seek out gender related behaviour. Gender identity is the motivation to start sex typed behaviour not gender stability or constancy. its the idea that when they see information that is consistent with their schema, they incorporate it into it but if its inconsistent, they fail to encode it. 

They found that children under the age of 4, who showed no signs of gender stability of constancy, nevertheless demonstrated strongly sex-typed behaviours and attitudes. 

Gender Schema Theory is reductionist, as although it offers a plausible compromise between social learning and cognitive developmental theories, the theory neglects the influence of biological factors, assuming that all genders orientated behaviour is creted through cognitive means.

Children display a strong in group bias in terms of they process information and this is explained by the fact that children pay more attention to information that is relevant to their own experiances. Martin and Halverson's theory can explain many aspects of young childrens thinking about gender. 

This theory can account for the fact that young children tend to hold very fixed and rigid gender attitudes. Information that conflicts with existing schemas, such as the idea of a woman working on a building site, would be discounted or ignored in favour of information that confirms in group schema's, such as women working as a secretary.

xcnkln