Toward a Broader Understanding of Gender Development

性别也许是最基本的社会范畴--无论是在我们如何对他人进行分类和思考方面，还是在我们如何定义自己方面。 性别在人的一生中，特别是在童年时期，在人类经历中发挥着核心作用。大量的研究探讨了儿童如何开始理解什么是性别，并了解社会对性别角色的陈规定型观念表明了哪些典型的性别行为、偏好和态度。有几种理论可以解释性别理解的发展，从幼儿识别自己性别的能力到年龄较大的儿童和青少年将性别纳入自己自我概念的能力。虽然性别发展的研究几十年来一直是发展心理学的核心，但几乎所有的研究都集中在经历“典型”性别发展的儿童身上。本项目的目标是通过探索儿童时期典型和非典型的性别经历，研究文化、生物学和认知如何相互作用，以解释性别理解的发展。本项目的前提是，理解儿童性别经历的全部可变性是实现对性别发展完整理解的必要条件。具体而言，本研究主要围绕三个问题展开：（1）社会投入在性别发展中的作用是什么？(2)是否需要了解性别在一段时间内是稳定的，以发展对性别的更复杂的理解，如性别陈规定型观念？（3）性别认同较不常见的儿童是否表现出与性别认同较常见的儿童相似的性别发展模式？为了回答这些问题，研究人员将向儿童提供一系列性别发展措施，包括内隐和外显措施，依靠父母和儿童的报告，并将比较具有典型和非典型性别身份的人的反应。研究人员预测，目前的性别发展模型无法充分描述所有儿童的性别发展，并预计这些发现将有助于了解如何修改这些理论，以更好地解释所有儿童的性别认知和行为。

Gender is perhaps the most fundamental social category -both in how we classify and think about other people and in how we define ourselves. Gender plays a central role in human experience throughout the lifespan and especially during childhood. A great deal of research has explored how children begin to understand what gender is and learn which gender typical behaviors, preferences and attitudes are indicated by societal stereotypes of gender roles. Several theories exist to explain the development of gender understanding, from toddlers' ability to identify their own gender to older children's and adolescents' ability to incorporate gender into their own self-concepts. Although the study of gender development has been central to developmental psychology for decades, nearly all research has focused on children who experience "typical" gender development. The goal of this project is investigate how culture, biology, and cognition interact to explain the development of gender understanding by exploring both typical and atypical gender experiences in childhood.This project is based on the premise that understanding the full range of variability in children's gender experiences is necessary to achieve a complete understanding of gender development. Specifically, this research focuses on three major research questions: (1) What is the role of social input in gender development? (2) Is an understanding that gender is stable across time necessary to develop more complex understandings of gender, such as gender stereotypes?, and (3) Do children with less common gender identities show patterns of gender development similar to those of children with more common gender identities? To answer these questions the researchers will present children with a battery of gender development measures including implicit and explicit measures, relying on both parental and child report, and will compare responses among those with both typical and atypical gender identities. The investigators predict that current models of gender development will not adequately describe gender development across all children, and anticipate that these findings will yield insights into how to revise these theories to better explain gender cognition and behavior in all children.