Cognitive - Gender Schema

• Martin and Halverson developed the gender schema theory which accounts for cognitive development which suggests gender understanding changes with age.

  They agreed with Kohlberg in that gender is developed through avtive structure of their own learning rather than passively observing and imitating which SLT suggests.
• Schemas are mental constructs developed via experience and are used to organise knowledge around particular topics.

  A gender schema is a generalised representation of everything relating to gender and stereotypical gender appropriate behaviour.

  Martin and Halverson suggested that once a child establishes gender identity they begin to search their environment for information encouraging gender schemas.
• Gender schemas expand to include a wide range of behaviours and personality traits.

  For example boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls and this provides a framework that directs experience and understanding of itself.

  By age 6, children are more likely to misremember or disregard information that does not fit with their existing schema as they have fixed and stereotypical ideas of what's gender appropriate behaviour for their gender.
• Children also have a better understanding of the schema that are appropriate to their own gender (ingroup) which boasts a child's self esteem, which is consistent with the idea children pay more attention to information relevant to their gender identity rather than that of the other gender (outgroup).

  It's not until children are around age 8 that they develop elaborate schemas for both genders.
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  Research support for gender schema theory comes from Martin and Halverson who found that children under the age of 6 were more likely to remember gender consistent information than they were gender inconsistent behaviour. They found that children presented with gender schema consistent pictures, had good recall and those with gender schema inconsistent pictures had distorted recall e.g the children recalled the boy playing with the gun when it was the girl.

  This therefore provides evidence that supports gender schema theory adding validity to it.
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  The theory has cultural relativity.

  This is because Cherry argued that gender schemas don't only influence how people process information but also what counts as culturally appropriate behaviour.

  Traditional cultures which have rigid gender boundaries will raise children with schemas consistent to this.

  In societies with less rigid views, children will form fluid schemas.

  Therefore this supports Martin and Halverson's theory as it can explain how gender schemas are transmitted between members of society and how cultural differences in stereotypes arise.
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  Research has suggested that children may develop and understanding of gender earlier than gender schema theory suggests.

  Zosuls loomed at the onset of gender identity in a longitudinal study of 82 children and took twice weekly reports from mothers about their child’s language and recorded them playing (ages 9-21m).

  On average at 19 months children labelled themselves as either boy or girl which suggests that children may have a gender identity earlier than this and just don’t have the ability to communicate it which suggests gender schema may underestimate how a child uses labels.
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  Although the cognitive approach leaves room for biological influences, it has the tendency to neglect them.

  Because of this, there are aspects that are difficult to explain such as how boys thinking is more rigid than girls’ but this is difficult to account for in the cognitive approach.

  Furthermore there are innate features of gender roles found in cultures that suggest universality which are most easily explained with biological frameworks.