Abstract
The present study was concerned with the avoidance of inappropriately sex-typed objects by kindergarten children as a consequence of observing an adult model inhibit sex-inappropriate responses. Eighty kindergarten children, 40 boys and 40 girls, participated as Ss. Children of each sex was assig-ned to one of four subgroups of a 2 × 2 design involving two age groups (younger vs. older Ss) and two conditions (experimental vs. control groups). The ages of the younger group ranged from 5-0 to 5-4 ; the ages. of the older group, from 6-0 to 6-4. In the initial phase of the experiment, Ss in the experimental group were individually exposed to the adult model of their own sex for two minutes. Ss in the control group did not odserve the model during this time. While playing with neutral toys inte nsively, the model twice approached inappropriate ly sex-typed toys with inhibiting verbal statements (e. g.,“These are nice toys, but I'm not going to play with them. They are all for girls. Boys won't play with this kind of toys.”). The present study, therefore, differed from previous studies which attempted, to demonstrate the model's inhibitory effects with respect to the presentation of the model. In most previous studies, Ss observed a “deviated” model being punished. Immediately following this treatment, S was, offered two groups of toys, sexinappropriate and neutral toys, and allowed to play with them for seven minutes in the absence of E. S's play behavior was observed and recorded once every 10 seconds by judges who observed the session through a one-way mirror. Thus, each S was observed 42 times. Two different scores were obtained from the observation: latency and percent-inappropriate scores. Latency scores consisted of the number of time intervals elapsing before S was observed to look at, came close to, or touched a sex inappropriate toy. Percent-inappropriate scores consisted of the number of interval in which S looked at, was close to, or touched' a sex inappropriate toy divided by the number of intervals spent with all toys.
The major findings of the study were the following:
1) The latency data, in general, showed that those Ss who observed the model approached and touched sex inappropriate toys with significantly longer latencies than those Ss who did not observe the model. The percent-inappropriate data indicated that the means of this measure were significantly smaller for Ss in the experimental groups than the means for Ss in the control conditions. These results were interpreted to suggest that control over the sex inappropriate responses may be vicariously acquired both by the observation of the model inhibiting sex-inappropriate responses and the observation of incompatible model's behaviors.
2) Differential effects of the model for two age levels were noted only in the latency data of boys. The younger boys who observed the model approached and touched feminine toys with significantly longer latencies than the younger boys in the control group. A similar difference between the experimental and control groups was not found for the older boys. Such differential effects of the model were not observed in the girls data.
