The child's expectations of differences in adult male and female interactions

Children of two different age groups, 2-year-olds and 4-year-olds, were placed with male and female adults in a laboratory play situation where the children were forced to control the choice of toys and mode of interaction. The 4-year-old children elicited different types of play behaviors from male and female adults, while the younger children did not.Final preparations of this paper was completed on a post-doctoral fellowship (Grant No. 1 T32MH 16955-01) at Oregon Social Learning Center. The study with older children was presented at the biennial conference of the Society for Research in Child Development, San Francisco, March 1979.