Abstract
The purpose of the present study was 1) to investigate the effects of model on the acquisition of sex role behavior in children and 2) to examine the sex differences in the acquisition of sex role behavior. According to their age, 204 Kindergarten children were divided into older (55 boys; mean age: 6; 0, and 55 girls; mean age: 5; 11) and younger groups (57 boys; mean age: 5; 0, and 37 girls; mean age: 5; 0).
Experimental subjects were exposed to an adult model through VTR (Control subjects were not presented a model.). After the subjects observed the model playing with a neutral toy and/or giving sex-typed labels to the neutral toys aloud (i. e.,“This isa toy for boys.” or “This is a toy for girls.”), they were instructed to play with the toys (the same as those they watched through VTR) and their behaviors were observed by an experimenter for 5 minutes. Effects of the model on children's play behavior were analysed from two aspects: 1) effects of observing the modeled behavior (i. e., visual cue) and 2) effects of verbal cue uttered by a model (i. e., verbalization of sex-typed labels to the neutral toys).
The main results were as follows.
(1) Under the condition in which verbal cue was added to modeled behavior (visual cue), children could perform sex-appropriate behavior most efficiently.
(2) Older children were more influenced by observing a model than younger children.
(3) Older children were more sex-typed than younger children.
(4) As for sex differences, boys appeared to be more sex-typed than girls at the superficial level. On the contrary, girls seemed to be more stable than boys at the inner level of sex role.
