HIGH AND LOW GENDER SCHEMATIC CHILDRENS RELEASE FROM PROACTIVE-INTERFERENCE

Thirty-seven 4-5 year-old predominantly white children from moderate S ES households, identified as high and low gender schematic, completed a Release from Proactive Interference task (RPI) comprised of drawings of same-sex gender-typed toys and-animals. The RPI task assesses spon taneous comprehension, encoding, and short-term recall of items from t wo categories of information. As predicted, high gender schematic chil dren demonstrated significantly greater patterns of release from proac tive interference than low schematic children. Specifically, high and low schematic children's patterns of recall following a shift from sam e-sex gender-typed toys to animals differed significantly, suggesting that gender roles are a more salient and influential information proce ssing dimension to high than low gender schematic children. Results ad d to data validating the present measure of gender schematicity and it s ability to differentiate individual differences in the salience of g ender roles to young children. Results also corroborate and expand on theory and research describing the impact and consequences of individu al differences in the salience of the gender role dimension on the inf ormation processing of high and low gender schematic children.