gender schema 16 marker example

• Gender Schema Theory, proposed by Martin and Halverson (1981), explains gender development as a cognitive process whereby children actively construct mental frameworks or schemas about gender. These schemas are formed through social learning and cultural influences, often beginning around the age of 2-3 when a child recognizes their own gender identity.
• Once children understand they are male or female, they start to develop in-group (own-gender) schemas and learn what behaviors are appropriate for their gender. These schemas help the child organize and interpret information about gender roles, guiding attention, memory, and behavior. For example, a child may associate "playing with trucks" with being male and may avoid or forget schema-inconsistent information.
• Importantly, gender schemas influence behavior before gender constancy is achieved (unlike Kohlberg’s cognitive theory). Thus, children selectively attend to information that matches their gender schema and ignore inconsistent information
• One strength of Gender Schema Theory (GST) is that it is supported by empirical evidence showing how gender schemas affect memory and perception. Martin and Halverson (1983) conducted a study where children were shown images of boys and girls engaging in gender-consistent (e.g., a boy playing with a truck) and gender-inconsistent (e.g., a boy playing with a doll) activities. When tested a week later, children were more likely to remember the gender-consistent images correctly, but often misremembered or distorted the gender-inconsistent ones — for example, recalling a girl (instead of a boy) playing with the doll.
• This supports GST’s claim that gender schemas act as cognitive filters, shaping how children attend to and recall information. The study demonstrates that children selectively process information that aligns with their gender schemas, providing strong evidence for the theory’s cognitive mechanisms.
• A limitation of Gender Schema Theory is that it places too much emphasis on cognitive processes and neglects the influence of social and biological factors in gender development. While schemas may help explain how children organize gendered information, they do not account for how children initially acquire these schemas. Social Learning Theory, for example, argues that children learn gender roles through reinforcement and modelling from parents, peers, and media — processes that GST largely overlooks.
• Additionally, biological influences such as hormones (e.g., testosterone in boys) have been shown to affect preferences for certain types of play. For instance, research has shown that even very young infants — before schema development — show gender-typical toy preferences, suggesting a biological component. Therefore, GST may offer an incomplete account by focusing too narrowly on internal cognitive structures without considering the broader social and biological context.
• Another limitation of this theory is the issue of individual differences. Gender schema theory cannot explain why different children with much of the same environmental influences respond differently to gender-appropriate behaviour. For example, this theory cannot explain why some girls may prefer action figures and some boys may prefer Barbies. This may be due to biological differences such as genes and hormones, which gender schema theory largely ignores. .
• There may be a gender bias in this research. Studies have shown that girls are more willing to do masculine activities than boys are to do feminine activities. Thus, the development of gender schemas may be different for each gender. This may be due to social stigma: masculine traits and activities are seen as more desirable, and thus girls are more likely to have or perform them