“In one research program, 4- and 5-year-olds were shown unfamiliar gender-neutral toys (for example, spinning bells, a magnet stand), told that these objects were either ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls,’ and asked whether they and other boys or girls would like them. Children clearly relied on the labels to guide their thinking. Boys, for example, liked ‘boy’ toys better than girls did, and children assumed that other boys would also like these toys better than other girls would. Just the opposite pattern of reasoning was observed when these same objects were labelled as ‘for girls.’ Even highly attractive toys soon lost their lustre if they were labelled as for the other gender (Martin, Eisenbud, & Rose, 1995).
In addition, children are said to construct an own-sex schema, which consists of detailed plans of action that they will need to perform various gender-consistent behaviours and enact a gender role. So a girl who has a basic gender identity might first learn that sewing is ‘for girls’ and building model airplanes is ‘for boys.’ Then, because she is a girl and wants to act consistently with her own self-concept, she will gather a great deal of information about sewing to add to her own-sex schema, while largely ignoring information about building model airplanes. To test this notion, 4- to 9-year-olds were given boxes of gender-neutral objects (for example, burglar alarms, pizza cutters) and told that these objects were either ‘boy’ items or ‘girl’ items (Bradbard et al., 1986). As predicted, boys subsequently explored ‘boy’ items more than girls did, whereas girls explored the objects more when they were described as ‘girl’ items. One week later, boys recalled much more in-depth information about ‘boy’ items than girls did, whereas girls recalled more than boys about these vary same objects if they had been labelled ‘girl’ items. If children’s information-gathering efforts are consistently guided by their own-sex schemas in this way, we can easily see how boys and girls might acquire very different stores of knowledge and develop different interests and competencies as they mature.”
Source: Developmental Psychology Childhood and Adolescence 3rd ed. Author: SHAFFER