cognitive explanations of gender development: Gender Schema Theory Evaluations

GST predicts that children begin acquiring information about gender schemas before they reach gender stablity around the age of three. Researchers found that children under the age of four showed no signs of gender stability, let alone signs of constancy -Which according to Kohlberg around the age of six-. Despite a lack of constancy, the children did display strong gender stereotypes about what boys and girls were premitted to do. This shows that they have acquired information about gender roles before Kohlberg suggester in line with GST.

If gender schemas are important in acquiring information about ingroup gender stereoptypes then we would ecpect children to pay greater attention to information consistent with gender schemas and to remember this information better. It was found that when children where asked to recall picture of peoples of people, children under the age of six recalled more of the gender-consistent ones such as a male firefighter or a female teacher than the unconsistent ones such as a male nurse or female chemist. Furthermore children tend to pay attention…