Bears are for boys: Metaphorical associations in young children's gender stereotypes

Objects may be gender typed by virtue of their use by or association with one sex or the other or because they embody qualities that show a nonliteral or metaphorical correspondence to characteristics of or beliefs about males and females. For Study 1, we developed the Gender Stereotyping Test, a sorting task with which we determined that 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds make use of both types of information in assigning objects or qualities to each sex. Study 2 replicated results with a new group of 4-year-olds and found that children whose test scores indicated at least some knowledge of gender identity were more likely to gender type metaphorical, but not conventional, items than those whose scores failed to indicate stable and constant knowledge of gender identity. In Study 3, which used a truncated version of the sorting task, children at age 3 made minimal use of either type of information. Gender stereotypes are considered in terms of recent theories of metaphor as a conceptual mechanism by which what is known in or about one domain is projected to another domain for the purpose of understanding.     

The role of gender and gender role similarity in readers' identification with story characters

This study tested the hypothesis that adult readers would identify with story characters who display a similar gender role orientation. Male and female readers rated their identification with male and female characters who acted in either a masculine or feminine manner in short story vignettes. The primary finding was an interaction between gender role of reader and gender role behavior of character: as predicted, androgynous and undifferentiated readers identified equally with both masculine and feminine characters, masculine readers identified more strongly with masculine characters than feminine characters, and feminine readers identified more strongly with feminine characters than masculine characters. Further, androgynous readers identified somewhat more strongly with both types of characters than undifferentiated readers. However, the predicted effect of gender similarity between reader and character did not exert a strong influence on the identification process. In addition, feminine subjects reported greater identification across all four stories than masculine and undifferentiated subjects. Finally, of three questionnaire measures of empathy tested, only Davis's (1983) Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Empathic Concern subscale) significantly predicted general level of identification; as expected, these scores were significantly correlated with femininity gender role scores.     

The use of picture prompts and prompt delay to teach receptive labeling

The current study extended research on picture prompts by using them with a progressive prompt delay to teach receptive labeling of pictures to 2 teenagers with autism. The procedure differed from prior research because the auditory stimulus was not presented or was presented only once during the picture‐prompt condition. The results indicated that the combination of picture prompts and prompt delay was effective, although 1 participant required a procedural modification.     

Development of gender labeling: Effect of age of pictured children

Toddlers (27 girls and 25 boys) between 20 and 42 months of age were given three gender discrimination tasks, each consisting of 12 pairs of photographs of girls and boys at one of three age levels: 3, 8, or 13 years. The subject's task was to point to the designated target (girl or boy) on each trial. Subjects' gender discrimination improved with age, with a fairly sharp transition from chance to accurate responding occurring at approximately 29 months. The age of pictured children did not affect performance.     

Sex stereotyping of infants: A review of gender labeling studies

Studies that have addressed the question of whether adults and children respond differently to male and female infants because of actual differences in the infants or because of preconceived sex stereotypes are reviewed, and the overall conclusions from these studies are evaluated. Twenty-three studies were identified in which neutrally clothed infant stimuli were labeled male in some conditions and female in other conditions. The strength and consistency of gender labeling effects on perceptions and behaviors in these studies were appraised. The results indicate that knowledge of an infant's gender is not a consistent determinant of adults' reactions, but more strongly influences young children's reactions. The implications of these findings for research on early sex role socialization are considered.     

John Exner and the book that started it all: a review of The Rorschach Systems

This article is a review and a reassessment of Exner's (1969) The Rorschach Systems. The book reviews the history of the development of the Rorschach, primarily in the United States, including a detailed analysis of the progressive development of systems devised by Klopfer, Beck, Piotrowski, Hertz, Rapaport, and Schafer. The final versions of each system are compared with each other, and with Rorschach's own system. The development of the book is linked to Exner' s personal relationship with Klopfer, Beck, and Hertz. The book is described as the basic forerunner of Exner's Comprehensive System.     

The voices in children's literature: The impact of gender on the moral decisions of storybook characters

The study examined the moral and self orientations of 212 male and female characters in 50 works of fiction for school-aged children. A modified version of Lyons' coding scheme was used for differentiating between Justice and Care moral orientations, and Separate/Objective and Connected self orientations. It was hypothesized that male characters would demonstrate Justice morality and a Separate/Objective self, whereas female characters would demonstrate Care morality and a Connected self, regardless of sex of author. The results confirmed the hypotheses. The importance of literature in providing symbolic models of moral decisioning and the need to expand children's moral orientations beyond gender-linked stereotypes was discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 1988, New Orleans, Louisiana.     

Not all disfluencies are are equal: The effects of disfluent repetitions on language comprehension

Disfluencies can affect language comprehension, but to date, most studies have focused on disfluent pauses such as er. We investigated whether disfluent repetitions in speech have discernible effects on listeners during language comprehension, and whether repetitions affect the linguistic processing of subsequent words in speech in ways which have been previously observed with ers. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure participants’ neural responses to disfluent repetitions of words relative to acoustically identical words in fluent contexts, as well as to unpredictable and predictable words that occurred immediately post-disfluency and in fluent utterances. We additionally measured participants’ recognition memories for the predictable and unpredictable words. Repetitions elicited an early onsetting relative positivity (100–400 ms post-stimulus), clearly demonstrating listeners’ sensitivity to the presence of disfluent repetitions. Unpredictable words elicited an N400 effect. Importantly, there was no evidence that this effect, thought to reflect the difficulty of semantically integrating unpredictable compared to predictable words, differed quantitatively between fluent and disfluent utterances. Furthermore there was no evidence that the memorability of words was affected by the presence of a preceding repetition. These findings contrast with previous research which demonstrated an N400 attenuation of, and an increase in memorability for, words that were preceded by an er. However, in a later (600–900 ms) time window, unpredictable words following a repetition elicited a relative positivity. Reanalysis of previous data confirmed the presence of a similar effect following an er. The effect may reflect difficulties in resuming linguistic processing following any disruption to speech.     

The shaping of masculinity: Revisioning boys turning away from their mothers to construct male gender identity

This paper offers an understanding of the nature of the internalization processes involved in the shaping of male gender identity founded on the boy's unique struggles in separating from his mother. The underpinning for the initial development of a sense of masculinity is reconsidered as the author questions the widely held idea of Greenson and Stoller that a boy normatively has to 'dis-identify' from his mother to create his gender identity. Import rather is placed on the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mother's (and father's) pre-oedipal and oedipal relationship with their little boy in order better to understand the nature of the boy's unique identifications and subsequent sense of masculinity. Both the security of the boy's attachment to his mother, in providing the foundation for a transitional turning to an 'other', and the mother's capacity to reflect upon and recognize her own, as well as the father's and her son's, subjectivity and maleness, are crucial in comprehending boys' 'attachment-individuation' process. Likewise, the unconscious paternal and maternal imagos and identifications of both the boy's mother and father, as well as the father's pre-oedipal relationship with his little boy and the boy's mother, are extremely significant in shaping a son's gender identity. The author argues that these early maternal (and paternal) identifications live on in every male and continue to impact the sense of maleness in a dialectical interplay throughout the life span. A maturing gender identity develops from integrating these early, pre-oedipal maternal identifications that no longer need be repudiated nor defensively organized as polarized gender splitting.     

The swimsuit becomes us all: ethnicity, gender, and vulnerability to self-objectification

Self-objectification theory posits and past research has found that Caucasian women's body image is negatively affected by a stigma of obesity and sociocultural norm of thinness that leads women to self-focus from a critical external perspective. However, research in this area is limited by its methodology and the restricted demographic composition of its study participants. The current study tested 176 men and 224 women of Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, and Asian American descent in a situation that induced a state of self-objectification (e.g., wearing a one-piece Speedo bathing suit) or that served as a control condition (e.g., wearing a sweater). Contrary to previous research, when put in a self-objectifying situation, men and women of every ethnicity experienced negative outcomes (e.g., lower math performance) that parallel those previously found for Caucasian women.     

Developmental changes in the effect of inversion: using a picture book to investigate face recognition

A novel child-oriented procedure was used to examine the face-recognition abilities of children as young as 2 years. A recognition task was embedded in a picture book containing a story about two boys and a witch. The story and the task were designed to be entertaining for children of a wide age range. In eight trials, the children were asked to pick out one of the boys from amongst eight distractors as quickly as possible. Response-time data to both upright and inverted conditions were analysed. The results revealed that children aged 6 years onwards showed the classic inversion effect. By contrast, the youngest children, aged 2 to 4 years, were faster at recognising the target face in the inverted condition than in the upright condition. Several possible explanations for this 'inverted inversion effect' are discussed.     

Not all gifts are good: The potential practical costs of motivated gifts

People rely on support from others to accomplish mundane and momentous tasks. When asking for assistance, is it beneficial to incentivize a helper by offering a motivated gift (i.e., a gift with the hope of getting support in return)? Six studies (N > 2,500) examine the frequency and potential costs of motivated gifts. In Study 1, a third of Americans indicated that they had given a motivated gift at least once, while nearly two‐thirds believed they had received one. In Studies 2a–d, most participants who imagined receiving a motivated gift before a favor request reported lower willingness to help and anticipated satisfaction from helping than participants who imagined simply being asked for a favor. Finally, Study 3 replicates these findings with actual help provided among friends in a laboratory setting. Findings suggest that motivated gifts are relatively common but may sometimes undermine the assistance that people hope to receive.     

The influence of gender stereotype on projection of aggression in the rosenzweig picture frustration study

The present study analyzes the aggressive responses of children to pictorially presented frustrating situations in the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Study in terms of the sex of the subjects and the sex of the figures. The sample consists of 22 male and 22 female children matched with each other in terms of a number of variables. The results reveal no effect of sex of the child on aggressive responses; however, the sex of the frustrated figure depicted in the pictures significantly affects type and direction of aggression in both male and female subjects. The findings are discussed in terms of gender stereotype.     

《全真列祖赋》所述人物考

元代著名道士宋德方(披云真人)曾撰写了一篇《全真列祖赋》①,是全真道早期的一篇极其重要的文献。它以无名道人回答绝相公子提问的方式,论述了全真道的基本信仰和历史传承。文章认为:“全真之名,始自东华帝君。”自东华帝君之后,文章列举了19名仙真的名号和赞语,他们是:正阳子钟离公、纯阳子吕公、海蟾子刘公、重阳子王公、玉蟾子和公、灵阳子李公、丹阳子马公、长真子谭公、长生子刘公、长春子丘公、玉阳子王公、广宁子郝公、清静散人孙仙姑、默然子刘师叔、长清子严公、醴泉史风子、回阳子于公、云中子苏公、云阳子姚公。值得注意的是,虽…     

Developmental and individual differences in preschoolers' recognition memories: The influences of gender schematization and verbal labeling of information

Eighty-three 37-92-month-old children's gender schematization and recognition memories for gender-typed content were assessed. Verbal labeling of stimuli and age were positively associated with children's memories. Highly gender schematic children displayed better memories for gender-role consistent information and committed more gender transformation errors than less gender schematic children. Interactions between children's gender schematization, age, and labeling condition were observed. Labeling of stimuli facilitated less schematic children's memories for gender-role consistent information. Gender schematization was positively associated with younger children's memories, suggesting younger children's memories are more strongly mediated by gender schematization than older children's. Results support the position that studies of gender schema development require an integrated approach recognizing individual and developmental differences in gender schematic processing.Completion of this project was facilitated by funds received while the author was a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Denver: Grant 5T32 MH 15780-09. This support is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Human Development, Charleston, South Carolina, 1988. The author would like to thank the faculty and staff of the Tiny Tot, Jack & Jill, Little Learners II, Plymouth and Upstate preschools for their assistance and cooperation. The author wishes to recognize James Aber, Rosanne David, Melisa Shack, and Susan Zigelbaum for their exceptional service in conducting the project; and would also like to thank Joan Barth, D. Bruce Carter, Gail S. Goodman, Carol L. Martin, William J. Meyer, Kathy Park, Ralph J. Roberts, Jaipaul L. Roopnarine, Margaret L. Signorella, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.     

Verbal labeling as an assimilation mnemonic for abstract visual stimuli: The sample case of recognition memory for Chinese characters

In four experiments, we examined the effect that presenting a verbal stimulus (viz., an English noun) alongside an abstract visual stimulus (viz., a Chinese character) enhances recognition memory for the abstract visual stimulus. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the character-plus-word combination at both encoding and retrieval results in better recognition than does a character-alone presentation or presenting the combination at encoding only. Experiment 2 demonstrated that presenting the word first and then the character results in better performance than does the opposite order. Experiment 3 showed that the concreteness value of the word, not familiarity, is the critical factor. In Experiment 4, presentation time was varied. More time was needed for liftoff from chance level for the word-character combination than for the character-alone presentation. Together, the results suggest that subjects spontaneously assimilate stimulus and word into a single representation by building asymmetric effortful imagery associations, going from the English word to the Chinese character.     

Boys will be boys (and girls will be girls): The attribution of gender role stereotypes in a gaming situation

This study tested one hypothesis concerning the attribution of gender role stereotypes about competitive behavior and three hypotheses concerning differences in attribution of sex between male and female subjects. The study used a Prisoner's Dilemma Game setting to expose subjects to one of three conditions (competitive, cooperative, or tit-for-tat) to measure attribution of sex to an unknown confederate. A chi-square analysis revealed significant differences in the attribution of sex to the anonymous confederate between the competitive and the combined cooperative and tit-for-tat groups. In the competitive condition, subjects were more prone to think that the anonymous confederate was male than were subjects in the cooperative and tit-for-tat condition. This finding is consistent with the gender role stereotype that generally associates competitive behavior with masculinity and not with femininity. Post hoc chi-squares also revealed no difference between male and female subjects in the attribution of sex in any of the three conditions. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Feminine gender role behavior and academic achievement: Their relation in a community sample of middle childhood boys

Previous studies on the relationship between gender role behavior and academic achievement and/or cognitive abilities in boys have led to somewhat conflicting hypotheses. The present study extends these hypotheses to a broadly representative school-based sample of boys (ages 6–10 years) and asks whether feminine and/or masculine gender role behavior is associated with lower academic achievement in general as well as specifically in math, and whether these relationships increase with age. The parents of 333 boys (74% of the eligible sample) who attended one public school system in northern New Jersey agreed to participate. The survey included two psychometrically robust gender role behavior questionnaires as well as the Child Behavior Checklist, which contains a scale concerned with school achievement, all based on parental report. In addition, the results of the routinely school-administered California Achievement Tests were analyzed. The results only weakly and somewhat inconsistently supported the hypotheses. We conclude that variations of gender role behavior as seen in a school-based sample are only marginally correlated with school achievement. The correlation patterns vary with the aspect of gender role behavior—masculinity, femininity—under investigation and with age.We wish to thank the children and parents who participated in the study. We also acknowledge the secretarial assistance of William Tallmadge. This research was conducted while David Sandberg was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychiatry of Columbia University and funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (National Research Service Award HD06726). In addition, this work was supported in part by grants to Drs. Ehrhardt and Meyer-Bahlburg from the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, and by NIMH Clinical Research Center Grant MH-30906, and NIMH Research Grant MH-34635.     

Neuronal correlates of three attentional strategies during affective picture processing: an fMRI study

This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study directly compared the neurocircuitry involved in three different attentional strategies during affective picture processing. We exposed 40 participants (20 men, 20 women) to images depicting dental treatment, as well as neutral scenes. They were asked to do one of three tasks while watching the same pictures: directing their attention toward a foreground object within the picture (distraction), classifying whether the image showed dental treatment, or deciding whether the scene elicited fear of pain (introspection). The participants performed the distraction and classification task with high accuracy and rated only 11 % of the dental treatment pictures as pain relevant. Introspection was associated with increased activation of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), relative to the two other conditions. Since the dental, relative to the neutral, pictures elicited enhanced DMPFC activation across all conditions, this underlines the role of this brain region for the assignment, as well as self-reference, of affective meaning. Moreover, self-reported dental anxiety was positively correlated with activation of a pain modulatory network (DMPFC, basal ganglia) when the participants focused on the pain relevance of the dental treatment cues. For future studies, it seems promising to study a high-anxious group or even patients afflicted with dental phobia.     

The effect of methylphenidate on three forms of response inhibition in boys with AD/HD

The current study was aimed at (a) investigating the effect of three doses methylphenidate (MPH) and placebo on inhibition of a prepotent response, inhibition of an ongoing response, and interference control in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), and (b) studying dose-response relations for the three forms of response inhibition. To meet these aims, the following tasks were selected: two versions of the Stop Paradigm for inhibition of a prepotent response, a Circle Tracing Task and a recently developed Follow Task for inhibition of an ongoing response, and the Stroop Color-Word Test and an Eriksen Flanker Task for interference control. These tasks were administered to 23 boys with AD/HD during four treatment conditions: 5 mg MPH, 10 mg MPH, 20 mg MPH, and placebo. A pseudorandomized, multiple-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design was used. As hypothesized, inhibitory control in children with AD/HD improved under MPH compared to placebo. However, this effect was only significant for inhibition of a prepotent response and inhibition of an ongoing response (as measured by the Follow Task), but not for interference control. The relation between treatment condition and response was linear. However, this linear relation was due to improved inhibitory control under MPH compared to placebo, because no effects of MPH dose were observed for any of the response inhibition measures.