Cognitive

• The cognitive theory was proposed by Liben and Bigler and they essentially extended gender schema theory.

  They suggested there are 2 pathways to gender development, the first being the acknowledgment of gender schema which directs gender appropriate attitudes and behaviours.

  The second pathway described how gender schemas are affected by the activities a child engages in.

  If personal interests are more dominant it can influence the development of gender schemas often leading to androgynous behaviour, flexible attitudes or someone’s opposite gender identities.
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  Supporting research for this comes from Weisgram who found a relationship between personal interests and stereotypes in us children aged 4 as those interested more in toys had more consistent gender stereotypes where they believed the toy was for both genders or only their same sex.

  They also found that gender schematic children were more interested in toys labelled for their gender than gender - aschematic children.

  Therefore this shows that the pathways between the 2 constructs are dependent on environmental info, personal interests and gender schemata as this model predicts.
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  However, other non cognitive theories may provide better explanations as they don’t just describe why but also explain the cause e.g. it’s inherited due to dimorphic brain structures.

  The cognitive theory lacks validity as it fails to explain how non typical behaviour develops in the first place and therefore it’s a cognitive model that takes the outcomes or symptoms and tries to use this as the cause.