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.     

Basic Language Skills and Young Children's Understanding of Causal Connections During Storytelling

The current study examined the role of basic language skills for individual differences in preschoolers’ understanding of causal connections. Assessments of basic language skills, expressive vocabulary, phonological processing, and receptive language comprehension were examined in relation to the production of causal connections in a storytelling task, at two time periods. Similar to previous cross-sectional research, children's causal connections increased over six months. As hypothesized, expressive vocabulary and phonological processing predicted causal connections at Time 1. Six months later, only phonological processing predicted causal connections. Results provide new information regarding the significance of basic language skills for early narrative skills.     

Mental models of line drawings.

Mental models are internal representations of world structure, used to accomplish cognitive tasks. I postulate specific representations (of objects and images) and associated context (of world and view) for mental models of line drawings. I then analyze the representations and context to predict specific perceptual modes, including the relative strengths of these modes. The predicted modes are supported by a well-known example [from Rock, 1983 The Logic of Perception (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)] where object perception changes with image orientation.