| Abstract: | Seven- and 10-year-old children were tested on memory and sex-role preference tasks. The memory task was the Wickens release from proactive inhibition paradigm in which short-term recall of words is tested on successive trials. On Trials 1–4, words were selected from one of two categories, either words with masculine or feminine connotations. On Trial 5, words were drawn from the second category. Sex-role preference was assessed by asking the child to select his favorite pictures from an array that included masculine and feminine items. Recall by boys at both ages increased following a shift between words with masculine or feminine connotations, suggesting that this dimension of a word's meaning was encoded in memory. Recall by girls who selected a feminine item as their favorite on the sex-role preference task increased following a category shift; recall by girls who chose a masculine item did not increase. These results are discussed in relation to previous research on the attributes of encoding in children's memory. |
