Gender Differences in Child Development

This class has a lot of overlap with a few of my other classes and I always find it very interesting to relate my classes to one another and to analyze how different ideas and topics can be applied to one another. In my Psychology of Gender class we discuss many of the different ways males and females differ and how they are the same. I am curious how this relates to child development and how gender differences affect the way we each develop. I have noticed in almost all of our readings for this class almost none of them look at developmental differences between boys and girls and almost always rely solely on age of the child instead.

In my Psychology of Gender class we often talk about how most of the differences that we observe between girls and boys are socially constructed. We reward children who follow the sex roles we create for them while we penalize or at least fail to reward children who don't conform to these roles. Parents create and reinforce the differences we observe between girls and boys by the way that they treat their child’s actions. There are also many differing explanations for the gender differences between boys and girls.

Leonard Sax wrote a book called “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.” In this book he talks about how a few years ago most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave were mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends. He said however that it is very hard to hang on to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated according to Dr. Sax. One of the main examples that he shows of this is that girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as they grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher-especially if the teacher is female. These male students are then much more likely to be diagnosed with ADD and given drugs to treat this, which is often unnecessary because the boy simple can’t hear his soft spoken female teacher so she thinks that he is just not paying attention to her.

Sax also discusses how the amygdala is the place known for negative emotions to be held in our brains. He says that girls are able to talk about their feelings sooner than boys because they develop the connection between the amygdala and the cerebral cortex much earlier. This however develops much later for boys, thus showing why they find it hard to discuss their feelings articulately. I am interested to see how this will apply to social interactions that we are learning about next week and how males and females differ in their social interaction. Females tend to have strong close relationships that rely on emotions and feelings, while males close relationships rely more on doing things or activities with another person to build a strong relationship. These gender differences in children are very interesting to me in the developmental process.

Pretending Childhood

As our guest lecturer, Alison, talked about pretend play in our class on Monday, it brought back some of my memory from childhood. When I was a kid, I loved to tie one end of a jacket, blanket, or large towel around my neck and leave the rest hanging down my back so it would look like a cloak. Then I would run around and jump from place to place, pretending that I can fly with this ‘wing’ that I put on myself. The reason I was pretending to be flying came from the cartoon I was watching around the time, where the super hero had a cloak and flies around to save people.

When I was four years old, my sister was born. And by observing her childhood, I remember that there was a brief period in which she had a doll as her friend, and she would talk to her and hug her during sleep. Sometimes our family even needed to make a space for her ‘friend’ to sit when we are watching TV together. However, unlike me, I don’t remember ever seeing my sister pretend to be some super hero or princesses in her childhood. Comparing my sister’s childhood with mine, I agree with one of the study Alison talked about, that boys tend to have pretend identity while girls tend to have imaginary friend.

While reviewing my childhood experience and my sister’s, I realized that pretend identity or imaginary friend is often influenced by culture and media. The super hero that I was pretending during my childhood was from a Japanese cartoon, which is the reason that I don’t think children in the US at the time would pretend to be that same hero. Moreover, as time changed, the media has also changed. With a lot more new characters from cartoon or other media types, children’s pretending target has changed. Only the classic super heroes, such as Superman and Spiderman, survived and still stayed as the top in children’s pretending list.

Making Childhood memories

I found the lecture on childhood memories and how children form these memories to be extremely fascinating. I personally do not remember very much from my own childhood except for small random things that really have no relevance. Most children remember events which are extremely emotional such as the birth of a sibling or experiences which they found to be exciting such as a dog having puppies. I feel that since I am a twin and was raised while my mom did day care, that some of these special events that children remember tended to not be as memorable or emotional for me. My family also moved about three times when I was fairly young and using the context-dependent retrieval hypothesis, maybe if I were to return to my old houses I would begin to remember some things that I can not retrieve just simply thinking about my childhood.
My first memories seem to be when I began to learn things like reading with my Grandmother. This to me says that maybe since these times were some of the only events in which I was experiencing something individually without my siblings that they may have been more solidified in my memory. It may have also been that my parents used more of a low elaborate reminiscing style.
Because I am pregnant with my first child I am really glad we discussed ways in which we can help children better remember their experiences. I want to use this high elaborative style so that my child can hopefully make some lasting memories about his childhood which I was not able to make. (Not that I have any animosity towards my parents :) )

Discussion of Memory Recall In Children

In the article “Culture and Language in the Emergence of Autobiographical Memory” by Robyn Fivush and Katherine Nelson, autobiographical memory and how it forms is discussed through the emergence of language, understanding of self, culture and gender. These authors propose that instead of childhood amnesia being a “barrier” that must be overcome in order to begin creating a “life story”, autobiographical memory is accumulated through socio-cultural development. It is stated that adults can recall memories at the earliest ages of three or four, because the density and level of detail of memories has developed within the child. However, the age can vary among different individuals. I can remember being two years old, and not only tidbits here and there, but a framework and a self awareness that I can still access in my memory today. I can remember floor plans of the many houses we lived in in great detail. Also people such as family members, neighbors, babysitters and friends. In the article, it is stated that adults can recall some details about events as early as the age of two, but it is argued that the child isnt able to effectively tie these memories together unless they are specifically targeted. I disagree with this statement, because I feel I can remember what I was thinking at the time and how I felt. I can recall a framework of daily life, and remember specific events that my parents did not tell me about, or that they didn’t even know in the first place (such as when I was doing something I shouldn’t have been).

I always thought that everyone else could remember the same things that I could, but that is not the case. My little sister, who is two years younger than me, cannot remember anything before the age of seven or eight. What could possibly account for the large range in age of rememberance? Fivush and Nelson claim that gender and culture are factors in the development of memory, but we are both female and raised by the same parents. The memories that she does have from childhood are memories that my parents and myself have created for her. I can remember telling her stories when we were younger about events in our lives, and when we were older, she would talk about these events using the exact same language that I had used when explaining them to her as a child. However, I know she didn’t explicitly remember these events, because she could not further describe them or give any other contextual details except for the things she was told. This might be explained by the presence of a “linguistic scaffold” that my parents and I created for her to help her organize events. Reminiscing about the past can help a child develop the ability to recall events and put them into an organized framework. I found it interesting that the ariticle described an experiment performed by Simcock and Hayne in 2002 that shows the emergence of this phenomenon. They had two and three year old children engaging in activities and then at the intervalls of six and twelve months later, they measured the level of recalled information and what the children could actually recall correctly. They found that the children could provide verbal recall, but all the words they used were words that they had in their vocabulary at the time. This shows that language is an important part of memory recall, because a person must have language to be able to describe an event.

Another point brought up in the article is that a child must be aware of themselves and others who also experience the same events. My sister disagrees with me about events that happened when we were children, but since I am older, I believe that my memory representations are more true to the situation than hers. The disagreements between the recall of the younger sibling versus the older sibling challenged her to understand that memories are just representations that are unique to each person. They depend on the child’s level of development, their persepctive of the situation, and past experiences that may be applied to help shape the memory.

Pretend Play

There are three types of pretending play. There are self as vehicle, object as vehicle and nothing as vehicle. For instance, a boy could pretend himself as the Spiderman. In addition, it seems that imagined friends could vary from human beings to a green alien. Clearly, the contexts of pretend play might depend on what information that a child has received. For example, it is possible that children in United States are easily to watch a cartoon or hear a story about aliens. So, children might imagine a friends looks like an alien. Children must have enough basic knowledge about human and the world to perform pretend play. Furthermore, based on the knowledge or perception that children have, children would have various contexts of pretend play. So, I would like to share with my experience of pretend play in this blog.

I remembered that I changed the contexts of pretend play with the trend of the media such as movies or animations. When I was around age 5, I liked to watch Kung-fu series movies. My brother and I were fascinated how the main characters killed their enemies by one kick or some fabulous Wu-Shu. Additionally, we were fascinated how main character could jump so high in the movie (If you have watched the movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you would understand what I mean here.) Therefore, during our play time, I usually pretended that I was a person who is really good at using sword. I also used the umbrella to pretend as a sword. In addition, I jumped on the mattress and pretended that I could jump really high like the people in the Kung-Fu movies. Later, when I was into the animation about a girl who has powerful magic, I started to pretend that I have powerful magic and liked to fight with other friends who pretend as devils. In short, my pretend play would influenced by the media.

Furthermore, unlike other children, I had no memory for having an imagined friend before 6. It is possible that I did not remember my imagined friends due to the childhood amnesia. However, I suspected that I did not have any imagined friend before age 6m because it is not necessary for me. Before age 6, I not only had my brother but also had my cousins to be my companions. I also had a group of friends in the kindergarten because I went to the kindergarten around age 2 and half. We hanged out and played together everyday. After my cousins, my brother and my friends who are older than I in the kindergarten went to the elementary school, I started to have an imagined friend. Thus, I think that children would create an imagined friend when they could not find any actual companion.

In conclusion, I am impressed how creative that children’s imagination. And, children’s imagination probably is inspired by the media across culture. Moreover, based on my own experience, it is possible that most of children have imagined friend because they do not have actual companions. Furthermore, I wonder if the imagined friend would relate to the schizophrenia. It seems that most of Hollywood movie portrait that adults who have imagined friend would have the schizophrenia. Recently, I have heard the news that a teenager created an imagined boyfriend due to the sexual abused. So, it would be interesting to investigate the relationship between imagined friend which were created after age 7 or older and the abnormal behavior in the future.

False Beliefs

Our reading from this Wednesday discussed theory of mind which is achieved by the age of 3 or 4. One of the important aspects of theory of mind is being able to understand intensions and actions of others and yourself, this is called false beliefs. Children can be tested if they are capable of false beliefs through a test called “misleading appearance” task. Children are lead to believe there is candy in a box but once they look in the box there are pencils inside. Five year olds say they expected there to be candy inside and believe that if other children looked in the box they would think there would be candy in the box also. Three year olds on the other hand say they always knew there were pencils inside and they believe that other children would know there would be pencils also. Another task that test false belief is “location change” task. The results are the same between five and three year olds.
In my Social Psychology class we talked about false beliefs and how adults still struggle with false belief tasks. One article I read, by Susan Birch and Paul Bloom, talked about the curse of knowledge can conflict with an adults reasoning of false beliefs. Birch and Bloom investigate if an adult has plausible knowledge of an event, is he or she capable of predicting another person’s false beliefs. The task was much similar to the way the test children’s false beliefs. Participants were randomly assigned to three different groups: ignorance, knowledge-plausible, or knowledge implausible. Participants were shown a picture of a girl holding a violin and standing by four containers. Each container was a different color: blue, purple, red, and green. The second picture they were shown was a different girl holding a violin and there were four of the same containers that were rearranged. Subjects were then told, ‘This is Vicki. She finishes playing her violin and puts it in the blue container. Then she goes outside to play. While Vicki is outside playing, her sister, Denise . . . .” Than they were told different things depending on which group they were in, “Ignorance: ‘‘moves the violin to another container.’’ Knowledge-plausible: ‘‘moves the violin to the red container.’’ Knowledge-implausible: ‘‘moves the violin to the purple container.’ The findings showed, that similar to children, an adult’s own knowledge makes it harder to reason others false beliefs and prediction of their actions, only when it is plausible knowledge. These finds concluded that one’s own knowledge can taint our abilities to reason what other people’s action and beliefs.
I get really excited when two of my classes discuss similar topics because you get different perspectives of the topic. False belief is a complex theory of the mind and the findings about adult’s capabilities on these tasks shed light on how children and adults social cognition isn’t much different.

ICs

I was really excited when Alison brought Calvin and Hobbes into lecture on Monday. I had a little moment in class when I remembered how sad I was when I realized that Hobbes wasn’t actually a real tiger, and that only Calvin could interact with him. I don’t remember having an imaginary friend myself, or really having a pretend identity (beyond the occasional Werewolf over Halloween), but I read as much Calvin and Hobbes as I could when I was younger. It was mentioned during the lecture how kids may use ICs to test the waters in certain situations, like when something has been broken, but I think that they could have a lot more benefits then just being a fall-guy. Just like our orienting abilities that we discussed earlier this term, I think that as adults we take our inner voice and our familiarity with it for granted. I know that when I wake up in the morning and part of me wants to stay warm, and the other part knows I need to go to class or work, that these aren’t two different people inside my head. I’m comfortable with the idea that I can have multiple desires and essentially a conversation with myself as I decide which one is the most appropriate to act on. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if children simply ascribe these dissenting voices to actual characters. It may even seem strange to them that we as adults don’t manage our various thoughts and desires in the same manner.
Children also may not understand the distinction we make and the value we place on real as opposed to imaginary things and actions. We have had years to come around to the idea that only our interactions in the real world can actually change our position in it, but this may not be so easily understood by children. Imaginary friends may provide as much support and much needed interaction as real friends and family do. It may be why they so readily they admit that their friends are only in their heads and that they made them up. It seems strange to us since we’ve come to the conclusion that we have better things to invest our energy in, but they may not see what the big deal is.