PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT AND SEXUALITY:

STUDIES ON COGNITIVE STYLES -II

None of these studies takes into account issues related to the psychosexual development of children, especially the role of infantile anxieties, the nature of the child’s relation to significant individuals in his or her life, and motivational factors. This is unfortunate, because most research on cognitive styles suggests that a difference between the sexes in this area might be related to the nature of the child’s relation to important individuals in his or her life. Investigation of the relation between cognitive style of reflection versus impulsivity suggests a greater impulsivity among boys than among girls, although the difference is not significant and is variable (Ward; Wright). In breadth of categorization, which is based on the child’s pattern of sorting when asked to group objects according to some differentiating attributes, there is a developmental shift away from finding perceptual attribute differences toward finding conceptual differences based on abstraction and synthesis. Furthermore, there seems to be a developmental pattern that shifts from over-discrimination (narrow) to breadth of categorization (Saltz and others). The question is whether the breadth, consistency, and accuracy of categorization bear any relation to the child’s observable behavior in the nursery school. Teachers’ ratings of children’s behavior in the classroom in Block’s and Block’s study indicated that four-year-old girls who characteristically “stretch limits” also were broad in their categorization. They also were described as having a number of psychological and interpersonal difficulties such as reacting poorly under stress, feeling jealous, displaying low resiliency, and being undependable. The study did not discriminate significantly for boys. This suggests that the breadth of categorization is inversely related to consistency-accuracy (ego resiliency) in girls at the four-year age level. However, Nelson and Bonvillian studying eighteen-month-olds, found the reverse pattern. In this study, girls generalized concept words to previously unnamed examples, indicating a much advanced functional level. The same proved true when the style of conceptualization was studied. In this study the child is asked to select from among a few pictures one that is like or “goes with” a standard picture. Evaluation is based on whether the child’s style of conceptualization is descriptive part-whole, descriptive-global, relational-contextual, or categorical-inferential (Siegel). The results of these studies suggest that there is a correlation between the child’s style of conceptualization and the child’s sex. Boys who score high on descriptive part-whole conceptualization also score high on emotional control. In contrast, girls scoring high on descriptive part-whole, score high on items such as carelessness, daydreaming, and inattentiveness. These differences also were true for boys and girls who scored high on relational-contextual style of conceptualization.

It is clear that the research on cognitive styles during the early period of life generally and on cognitive style and sexual development specifically, has a long way to go and needs conceptual and methodological clarification. The little that has been done has given us a glimpse of its potential and possibilities.

The field is burdened by controversy and emotionality and is colored by the current cultural trend toward redefinition and re-evaluation of long-accepted stereotypic sexual roles in Western societies. We may predict with some confidence that future patterns of child-rearing, their emphases, and values will be modified as a result of this trend. We also should be mindful that the hierarchy of values, the division of responsibility, and the modes of social and familial participation are defined not only by social and economic forces, but also by biological necessities nourished by genetic, hormonal, and biological roots, whose value is inspired by the survival of the individual and its species. For this reason, overlooking the individual differences between sexes or insisting that equality means an absence of difference, is not productive to our long search to understand ourselves.

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