Kindergarten children's sensitivity to geometry in maps

Geometrical concepts are critical to a host of human cognitive achievements, from maps to measurement to mathematics, and both the development of these concepts, and their variation by gender, have long been studied. Most studies of geometrical reasoning, however, present children with materials containing both geometric and non-geometric information, and with tasks that are open to multiple solution strategies. Here we present kindergarten children with a task requiring a focus on geometry: navigation in a small-scale space by a purely geometric map. Children spontaneously extracted and used relationships of both distance and angle in the maps, without prior demonstration, instruction, or feedback, but they failed to use the sense information that distinguishes an array from its mirror image. Children of both genders showed a common profile of performance, with boys showing no advantage on this task. These findings provide evidence that some map-reading abilities arise prior to formal instruction, are common to both genders, and are used spontaneously to guide children's spatial behavior.     

The effects of sex differences and evaluation on task performance and aspiration

An investigation was conducted of how evaluation differentially affects the performance and aspiration for future performance of 118 high school boys and girls. Subjects were selected to fit into either a superior or average intelligence group. In the high evaluation condition, subjects were instructed that their intelligence was being evaluated in anagram and visual-motor tasks they performed, while those in the low evaluation condition were instructed that the two tasks were being correlated. It was hypothesized that on a highly evaluated task, girls, when compared to boys, would show greater performance debilitation and would have lower aspirations for future performance. Although sex differences were found in performance debilitation and aspiration for future performance, they were not all in the predicted directions. Girls were equally debilitated in anagram performance under both evaluation conditions, while boys were debilitated in anagram performance only under high evaluation. When both boys and girls demonstrated a performance debilitation on the anagram task, their performance declined approximately 10%. No sex differences in performance were found on the visual-motor task. On both tasks, girls' aspirations were significantly affected by evaluation condition. The girls averaged 89% choosing the more difficult task in the low evaluation condition. Evaluation condition had no significant effect on aspiration for boys on either task. Intelligence showed no significant relationships.     

Looking and search measures of object knowledge in preschool children

The same preschoolers were tested on an observation task and a search task involving the invisible displacement of an object. In the observation task, children watched an object roll behind a screen from which protruded the top of a solid wall. Analyses revealed significantly longer looking to impossible than to possible outcomes in all children. In search, the child was allowed to retrieve the rolled object. Most 3-year-olds but significantly fewer 2.5-year-olds completed the search successfully. An unexpected sex difference was found, with boys outperforming girls. Search performance was not associated with observation measures. The findings indicate that children visually discriminate violations of solidity but that this sensitivity is not associated with successful search performance.     

Sex differences in math performance: The role of children's approach to schoolwork

This research examined whether the tendency for girls to outperform boys in the classroom is due to differences in how girls and boys approach schoolwork. In 5th grade and then again in 7th grade, children (N=518) reported on how they approach schoolwork (i.e., achievement goals and classroom behavior), their learning strategies, and their self-efficacy in math; math grades and achievement test scores were also collected. Girls were more likely than boys to hold mastery over performance goals and to refrain from disruptive classroom behavior, which predicted girls' greater effortful learning over time. The sex difference in learning strategies accounted for girls' edge over boys in terms of grades. Girls did not do better on achievement tests, possibly because self-efficacy, for which there was also no sex difference, was the central predictor of performance on achievement tests.     

Effects of Contrived information of Female and Male Performance on the Achievement Behavior of Preschool Girls and Boys1

Twenty-four girls and 24 boys enrolled in a university preschool were given two trials each to perform a marble-dropping task. After the first trial, subjects in the sex-appropriate condition were told that children of their sex perform the task better than children of the opposite sex. Subjects in the sex-inappropriate condition were told that children of their sex perform the task less well than children of the opposite sex. It was hypothesized that sex-appropriate subjects would set higher goals for Trial 2 than control subjects receiving no information and that sex-inappropriate subjects would set lower goals than control subjects. The hypotheses were not supported. Instead, children of both sexes set significantly higher goals when told that boys do better at the task. Interpretations of the results are offered.     

Adolescents' expectancies of success,self-evaluations,and attributions about performance on spatial and verbal tasks

The present study examined the expectancies of success, evaluations of performance, and achievement-related attributions that high school students made about verbal and spatial tasks that typically show sex differences. Although no sex differences were found in task performance, boys expected to do better than girls on both the spatial and verbal tasks. After completing the task, the girls continued to evaluate their performance more negatively than did boys on the spatial tasks. On spatial tasks girls also attributed to themselves less ability and saw the tasks as being more difficult than did boys. The results suggest that there are generalized, rather than task-specific, sex differences in achievement expectancies, evaluations, and attributions. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for sex-related differences in cognitive functioning and subsequent achievement behaviors.The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Judith Offer Fund and from the Spencer Foundation.     

The importance of gesture in children's spatial reasoning

On average, men outperform women on mental rotation tasks. Even boys as young as 4 1/2 perform better than girls on simplified spatial transformation tasks. The goal of our study was to explore ways of improving 5-year-olds' performance on a spatial transformation task and to examine the strategies children use to solve this task. We found that boys performed better than girls before training and that both boys and girls improved with training, whether they were given explicit instruction or just practice. Regardless of training condition, the more children gestured about moving the pieces when asked to explain how they solved the spatial transformation task, the better they performed on the task, with boys gesturing about movement significantly more (and performing better) than girls. Gesture thus provides useful information about children's spatial strategies, raising the possibility that gesture training may be particularly effective in improving children's mental rotation skills.     

Large sex difference in adolescents on a timed line judgment task: attentional contributors and task relationship to mathematics

Visuospatial performance, assessed with the new, group-administered Judgment of Line Angle and Position test (JLAP-13), varied with sex and mathematical competence in a group of adolescents. The JLAP-13, a low-level perceptual task, was modeled after a neuropsychological task dependent upon functioning of the posterior region of the right hemisphere [Benton et al, 1994 Contributions to Neuropsychological Assessment: A Clinical Manual (New York: Oxford University Press)]. High-school boys (N = 52) performed better than girls (N = 62), with a large effect for sex (d = 1.11). Performance increased with mathematical competence, but the sex difference did not vary significantly across different levels of mathematics coursework. On the basis of earlier work, it was predicted that male, but not female, performance in line judgment would decline with disruptions to task geometry (page frame), and that the sex difference would disappear with disruptions to geometry. These predictions were supported by a number of univariate and sex-specific analyses, although an omnibus repeated-measures analysis did not detect the predicted interaction, most likely owing to limitations in power. Thus, there is partial support for the notion that attentional predispositions or strategies may contribute to visuospatial sex differences, with males more likely than females to attend to, and rely upon, internal or external representations of task geometry. Additional support for this hypothesis may require development of new measures or experimental manipulations with more powerful geometrical disruptions.     

Resource utilization in mixed-sex dyads: The influence of adult presence and task type

This study explores the effects of context on cross-sex dominance. An emerging finding in the sex differences literature is that boys are often more successful than girls at influencing members of the other gender. As a result, boys tend to get more than their share of a scarce resource in mixed-sex situations. Because the presence of adults inhibits just those strategies that boys use successfully when dominating girls, we hypothesize that the presence of an adult will reduce or eliminate the sex difference in access to a scarce resource. This should be particularly true for tasks in which boys' strategies are most likely to be effective. To test this hypothesis, dominance (as evidenced by asymmetry in gaining access to a scarce resource) was measured while 48 boy-girl pairs, ranging in age from 42 to 60 months, negotiated turn taking at a movie viewer in either the presence or absence of an adult (adult location factor) in a situation that either did or did not require the cooperation of the second child in order to see cartoons (task type factor). For the cooperative task, neither sex significantly dominated the other in either the presence or absence of the adult. In contrast, for the competitive task, boys dominated in the absence of the adult. When the adult was present, however, boys and girls shared more equally. An examination of the strategies children used in the competitive task indicated that boys were inhibited in the adult's presence, dropping their rate of demands and giving girls longer turns. Implications for gender segregation and for sex differences in seeking proximity to adults are discussed.Portions of this paper were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Baltimore, Maryland, April 1987. This research was supported, in part, by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. The authors are grateful for the cooperation of the directors, staffs, parents, and children of the preschools that participated in the study; Bing School, Convenant Presbyterian Preschool, Menlo Park Presbyterian Nursery School, Buttons 'N Bows Preschool, Community Preschool, and Foothill College Child Care Center. We are also inebted to Carolyn Johnson, Robert McClure, Ennis Blount, Paul Endo, and Lara Helms for serving as experimenters, and to Colleen Kerrigan, Kathryn Shade, Diane Walters, Deborah Haley, Ira Lit, and Caroline Collins for their work in coding the data. Finally, we would like to thank Ellen Markman for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of the paper, and Mary Parpal, whose helpful comments and other contributions are greatly appreciated.     

SEX ROLE SATISFACTION AMONG AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN: SOME SEX, AGE, AND CULTURAL GROUP COMPARISONS

Children's satisfaction with being a member of their own sex was explored within two Australian samples. In a national sample of 2,268 children, grades 1–6, trends were similar to those reported in the United States. Girls were less satisfied with their sex role than boys, and older girls were more dissatisfied than younger girls. The most frequent reason girls offered for dissatisfaction with their sex was restriction of sports opportunities. In a smaller sample of 9–11-year-olds (133 boys, 146 girls), chosen to include adequate representation of children of non-Anglo immigrants, it was found that while Anglo-Australian girls were less satisfied with their sex role than boys, non-Anglo girls were just as satisfied as the boys. The non-Anglo girls were no higher in global satisfaction with themselves or with their lives in general than other children. They were, however, less likely to offer self-definitions that included sports abilities and interests. While non-Anglo parents observed a stronger public/private division of labor in certain childcare activities, this difference was not associated with children's satisfaction with their sex role. However, across the entire sample, children's sex-role satisfaction was associated with parents' division of labor on two tasks on which cultural groups did not differ—disciplining and comforting.     

Children's sex-role preferences: Stronger among girls than boys

Criticisms were raised about methods used in previous studies which have led to the conclusion that, compared to boys, girls have weaker preferences for their own versus the opposite sex role. In addition, it was argued that if children's own conceptions of sex roles — rather than an a priori adult definition — were investigated, girls would prefer their conception of femininity more than boys would prefer their conception of masculinity. This argument rested on evidence that for children, masculine traits often meet with social disapproval. Results indicated that both boys and girls judged their own sex role as more desirable than the opposite sex role. Results were stronger for the girls; and girls judged traits they assigned to the feminine sex role to be, on the average, more desirable than boys judged traits they assigned to masculinity. The difference between present findings and previous findings in regard to children and adults was discussed.Dennis Quintana assisted with the initial selection of items for the questionnaires described below. Elizabeth Bates, Ph.D., offered helpful suggestions for rewriting an earlier draft of this paper.     

Sex differences and the effect of instruction on reorientation abilities by humans

This study examined whether differences in the amount of information provided to men and women, in the form of verbal instruction, influenced their encoding during a reorientation task. When a navigator needs to orient, featural (e.g., colour or texture) and geometry (e.g., metric information) are used to determine which direction to begin traveling. The current study used a spatial reorientation task to examine how men and women use featural and geometric cues and whether the content of the task’s instructions influenced how these cues were used. Participants were trained to find a target location in a rectangular room with distinctive objects situated at each corner. Once the participants were accurately locating the target, various tests manipulating the spatial information were conducted. We found both men and women encoded the featural cues, and even though the features provided reliable information, participants generally showed an encoding of geometry. However, when participants were not provided with any information about the spatial aspects of the task in the instructions, they failed to encode geometry. We also found that women used distant featural cues as landmarks when the featural cue closest to the target was removed, whereas men did not. Yet, when the two types of cues were placed in conflict, both sexes weighed featural cues more heavily than geometric cues. The content of the task instructions also influenced how cues were relied upon in this conflict situation. Our results have important implications for our understanding of how spatial cues are used for reorientation.     

Sex differences during visual scanning of occlusion events in infants

A growing number of sex differences in infancy have been reported. One task on which they have been observed reliably is the event-mapping task. In event mapping, infants view an occlusion event involving 1 or 2 objects, the occluder is removed, and then infants see 1 object. Typically, boys are more likely than girls to detect an inconsistency between a 2-object occlusion event and a 1-object display. The current research investigated underlying reasons for this sex difference. Three eye-tracking experiments were conducted with infants at 9 and 4 months (mean age). Infants saw a ball-box or ball-ball occlusion event followed by a 1-ball display; visual scanning of the occlusion event and the 1-ball display was recorded. Older boys were more likely than older girls to visually track the objects through occlusion and more likely to detect an inconsistency between the ball-box event and the 1-ball display. In addition, tracking objects through occlusion was related to infants' scanning of the 1-ball display. Both younger boys and girls failed to track the objects through occlusion and to detect an inconsistency between the ball-box event and the 1-ball display. These results suggest that infants' capacity to track objects through occlusion facilitates extraction of the structure of the initial event (i.e., the number of distinct objects involved) that infants can map onto the final display and that sex differences in the capacity emerge between 4 and 9 months. Possible explanations for how the structure of an occlusion event is extracted and mapped are considered.     

Sex differences in children's trust in peers

Children in kindergarten, second, and fourth grades were required to judge how much they trusted each of their peers (classmates). A same sex pattern of peer trust was found; boys trusted boys more than they trusted girls, and girls trusted girls more than they trusted boys. This pattern of peer trust was evident in fourth- and second-grade children but not in kindergarten children. It was proposed that the same sex pattern of trust serves to reinforce and maintain the same sex pattern of peer relationships in children.     

Sex Referent Cues,Success Estimations,and Performance of Children on a Lateral Jumping Task

This study examined the effects of sex referent cues for the estimation of success, as well as actual performance on a simple motor endurance task. Boys and girls in grades 3 and 5 (N = 160) were randomly assigned to one of three referent groups or a control group. Subjects in the referent groups were given an identical referent score, (48), presented in three different forms: the average score for boys, the average score for girls, and the average score for children. The control group was given no referent score. Subjects were required to estimate their own success and then perform a timed side-to-side jump over a rope. Results suggest that as girls increase in age there is a decrease in their confidence in performing motor skills. Further, boys and girls at the two grade levels responded differently to the sex referent cues.     

Responses of boys and girls to a behaviorally focused school attitude questionnaire

In response to the Teacher Approval-Disapproval Scale (TADS), elementary school boys report receiving more personal disapproval and less personal approval from their teachers than do elementary school girls, but boys and girls do not differ in reporting how frequently their teachers distribute approvals and disapprovals to the whole class. Boys' attitudes toward being in the classroom are more negative than girls', but there is also a tendency for boys to perceive the whole class's attitude as being more negative than do girls. These results suggest that sex differences in school attitude are at least partially determined by differential teacher behavior toward boys and girls.     

A study of preschool children's linking of genitals and gender

The author describes a study that investigated what three- and four-year-old girls and boys know about the link between genital difference and gender difference by asking them to construct both a girl doll and a boy doll, using any of an assortment of anatomical features, including both male and female genitals. The results were interpreted as supporting the assumption of a normal early developmental period of psychological bisexuality; as contradicting the theory that when genital difference is discovered, girls are more distressed than boys about their genitals; and as evidence that both girls and boys envy the genital of the opposite sex.     

Sex differences in expressive drawing

We examined sex differences in expressive drawings produced by 105 boys and 105 girls aged 9-15 years. The drawings were classified according to the type of expressive strategy used to depict emotion (literal, content, abstract, or any combination of these), and rated according to the complexity of that strategy. A creative/divergent thinking task (figural form) was used to assess the relationship between expressive drawing and figural creativity. As predicted, girls scored higher than boys on the expressive drawing task. Specifically, girls relied less often on literal strategies alone and were more likely to combine literal expression with metaphorical (content and abstract) expression than boys. There was a linear relationship between expressive drawing and divergent thinking scores. These results are consistent with the idea that boys and girls differ in the expressive component of emotion, and suggest that these sex differences extend to the expressive drawing domain. They also suggest that divergent thinking may be involved in the ability to draw expressively.     

Children's vulnerability to stressful life events in mothers' eyes: Effects of gender and parental experiences

Although the professional literature indicates greater vulnerability to stress among boys than girls, research on stereotypes and gender typing in socialization offers indirect evidence of a contrary belief among parents. In order to assess sex differences in vulnerability directly, 80 Israeli middle-class mothers of elementary school children were asked to predict the difficulty that low- and high-stress life events would pose for child protagonists in eight vignettes. Sex of child was manipulated by gender label denotation. Results indicated that mothers of boys predicted greater child difficulties with stress than mothers of girls. They also predicted that boys would have more difficulty than girls, a sex difference that did not appear among mothers of girls. The results suggest that maternal perceptions of sex differences in vulnerability are influenced by observation of their own children under stress. Further, professional opinion and lay wisdom as to actual male vulnerability are not necessarily at loggerheads.     

Sex stereotypes and responses to juvenile delinquency

On the basis of our current knowledge of sex stereotypes and their influence on judgments about women and men, two conflicting hypotheses about reactions to delinquent behavior by men and women, or by boys and girls, can be put forward. First, because crime is mainly masculine, responsibility for criminal behavior will be more strongly attributed to a boy's nature than to a girl's, thereby leading to more severe punishment for boys. Second, deviations from a stereotype lead to negative evaluations, and thus should lead to harsher punishment for girls. The first study described, based on a field experiment with 709 adolescent and 403 adult subjects, was conducted to determine whether different sanctions were applied to boys and girls who engaged in identical delinquent behavior. The results show that for boys, more severe punishment was preferred for aggressive behavior, and for girls, more punishment for noncriminal delinquent behavior. In a second study (N=43), it was hypothesized that these differences in sanctioning corresponded with the degree of perceived masculinity of the delinquent behavior. This hypothesis was confirmed. A model shows how sex stereotypes about delinquent behavior lead to sex-related difference in attributions, which in turn lead to differences in punishment.