Sex Differences in Young Children's Understanding of the Mind: Do Girls Have an Advantage?
Date
1999
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
This study examines the development of theory of mind in children and the differences in the acquisition of this skill between boys and girls. By adapting tasks used on adults and older children, these differences are examined in children ages three to five in order to see whether girls outperform boys. Based on previous research looking at gender differences in emotional understanding as well as cognitive differences, particularly verbal, the hypothesis is that girls will outperform boys on these theory of mind tasks. There were no significant differences found between boys and girls on the tasks, though there were age differences, with older children outperforming younger children on three out of four of the tasks. Though gender differences were not found in this study, more research needs to be done to gain a better understanding of differences between the genders over a larger span of development.