Sex-Typed instructions and sex-role preference in young children's task performance

Two measures of sex-role preference were administered to 32 male and 32 female preschool children. Each group of children was divided according to sex-role preference scores, assigned to a male experimenter or a female experimenter, and performed two sorting tasks after being instructed that one task was masculine and the other feminine. One analysis was based on the sex preference of subjects as measured by the IT Scale for Children and the other was based on subject assignment from Toy Preference Test scores. The hypothesis that sex-role preference would predict performance on sex-labeled tasks was partially confirmed. All subjects performed better on the female task than on the male task and more accurately on all tasks with a male experimenter than with a female experimenter.This report is based on a master's thesis submitted to the University of Guelph by the first author. Acknowledgments are due to MacDonald, Aladdin, Jack and Jill, Wee Y'rs, Cambridge, and Christopher House preschools in Guelph and Cambridge, Ontario, for their cooperation.