Gender Schema Theory Essay Example for Free

Gender Schema Theory EssayMartin and Halverson suggested an alternative to the cognitive-developmental approach proposed by Kohlberg and called it the sexual practice schema theory. In Kohlbergs theory, children must reach sex activity consistency before they are able to begin imitating the deportment of analogous sex role models.In gender schema theory the early gender identity acquired at about the come along of three is the starting hitch to which children will then begin to look for schemas, schemas are packages of organised clutters of information about gender-appropriate behaviour and children learn these schemas by interacting with people, such as learning which recreates to break away with, which clothes to wear etc. and these back up children to make sense of the world around them and help children to organise their experiences and process new information and as well as to help self-evaluate themselves, this is to help them feel good about themselves.Support for the gender schema theory was conducted by Martin et al 1995 who showed toys to children aged four to five. Children were informed, before choosing a toy to play with that it was either a girls toy or a boys toy, they were then asked whether they and other boys or girls would like to play with the toys. They found that if a toy, such as a magnet, was given the label of being a boys toy then only boys would play with it.However if boys were told that it was a girl toy then they didnt want to play with it. Similarly girls would not play with toys labelled for boys. The label given at the start logically affected the childrens toy preference. It is an master(prenominal) finding in that it highlights the labelling and the categorisation of objects that children are subjected to from a young age, and how their toys can be labelled in the same way as appropriate gender behaviour.A limitation of this research is that an observation of the children and although it has high ecological v alidity as it is in a real life setting, the children may digest shown fill characteristics as the toys were stereotyped for their gender it is questionable if they had guessed the aim of the research and the results may have been due to the children trying to please the researcher as they may have thought they would get punished for choosing the wrong gendered toy to play with and how much of the childrens choice was due to free-will.It was also done in a controlled environs which means that the findings cannot be generalised outside of the research setting. Bauer 1993 wanted to investigate this further and set out to study the way in which children call upon gender schemas when processing information. Pre-school-age and older children have been found to process gender consistent and gender inconsistent information differently so Bauer wanted to see if this was the miscue in very young children as well.Bauer devised a way to test girls and boys as young as twenty-five months of age. Children observed the experimenter carry out in short sequences of stereotypically female person, male or gender neutral activities, for example, changing a nappy, shaving a teddy bear or going on a hoarded wealth hunt. She tested children by elicited imitation both immediately after and 24 hours later to see if they would copy what they had seen.Bauer found that girls showed equivalent quality of call up for all three types of sequence, boys on the other hand showed superior recall of male stereotyped activities, meaning they would not imitate any female behaviour and their recall for gender neutral activities was the same as for male stereotyped activities. These results indicate that boys more than girls tend to make use of gender schemas by the age of twenty-five months and boys appear to remember more accurately event sequences consistent with their own gender, whereas girls show no difference in recall of gender consistent and gender inconsistent information.A limitati on of this research is that it could be due to boys being more likely to be penalised by their parents, especially their fathers for carrying out female stereotyped activities, so the children may have played with the male stereotyped toys even if they wanted to play with the other female stereotyped toys.The findings may also be down to that Bauer, who modelled the sequences, is female and the boys may have felt uncomfortable in copying her behaviour. Gender schema theory is parsimonious as it tries to relieve gender through cognitive development and does not take into consideration biological gender differences, such as chromosomes, genes or hormones. It is also alpha-bias as it exaggerates the differences mingled with men and women.