Gender, task contexts, and children's performance on a computer-based task

Gender differences in response to computers have been widely reported. This study addresses the question of how far the context in which a computer ta sk is presented carl affect girls' and boys' on-task performance. In an exp erimental study involving 60 ten and eleven year-olds, we examine the effec ts of differential contextualisation on girls' and boys' performance on a c omputer-based perceptual-motor skills task. Our findings illustrate that ev en with a single, standard piece of software, children's performance carl b e substantially affected by the context in which that software is presented . The results suggest that gender differences in children's responses to co mputer tasks are relatively labile, and highly context sensitive. The impli cations and possible explanations for these findings are considered.