Running head: INFLUENCE OF LABELS ON JUDGMENTS OF PERFORMANCE

Transcription

1 The influence of 1 Running head: INFLUENCE OF LABELS ON JUDGMENTS OF PERFORMANCE The Influence of Stigmatizing Labels on Participants Judgments of Children s Overall Performance and Ability to Focus on Instructions on a Task Skidmore College

2 The influence of 2 Abstract Drawing upon previous findings that certain labels influence participants perceptions of the labeled person, this study attempted to determine if the labels of prenatally exposed to cocaine and gender might affect participants perceptions of children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions for a standard cognitive task. More specifically, it was also hypothesized that the gender of the rater and the amount of information one had about the children would interact with the label to influence participants judgments of the children on the task. All participants were told that they would be watching eight video clips of children performing a simple delayed response task in which they would be rating each child after each clip on certain dimensions of the child s performance; however, half of the participants were told that the child experienced a normal, healthy birth and the other half were told that the child was prenatally exposed to cocaine. The results indicated there was no significant effect for the cocaine label, but there were significant effects for the gender label. In fact, the gender label was more significant when participants had more information on the children. Overall, the lack of a cocaine labeling effect was inconsistent with earlier findings, whereas the significant gender labeling effect was consistent with previous findings.

3 The influence of 3 The Influence of Stigmatizing Labels on Participants Judgments of Children s Overall Performance and Ability to Focus on Instructions on a Task Human beings are constantly trying to create order in the somewhat chaotic world in which they are placed. As a way to accomplish these ends, they often try to categorize and classify the world in order to differentiate the people and objects around them. This need to categorize people and things can result in the use of certain labels (learning disabled, mentally retarded, etc.) which often tend to have biased views associated with them. For instance, immediately following birth, infants are labeled according to their gender (male or female) which influences people s perceptions of them even before they develop their own personality. An even more harmful label is that of the crack baby which has been popularized by the media in recent years and refers to infants who have been prenatally exposed to cocaine. In fact, the stigma attached to these infants is that they are sickly, unintelligent, inferior, and deviant beings as a result of this cocaine exposure early on. However, this myth seems to be more of a creation made up by the media than a true medical reality. Thus, previous research has focused on the accuracy of some of these labels, whether or not they actually do exist, and how they may ultimately influence people s perceptions (of the labeled person). In light of this fact, in order to see how accurate the crack baby label was, Bennett, Bendersky and Lewis (2002) did a study that actually examined the effects of cocaine exposure on the intellectual and emotional-behavioral adjustment of four year old children who had been prenatally exposed to cocaine. Similar to the most recent research examining this effect, it was found that the influence of prenatal cocaine exposure on the intellectual and behavioral outcomes of these children was basically nonexistent and that environmental factors were actually better predictors of the children s intellectual and emotional-behavioral adjustment (Bennett et al.,

4 The influence of ). However, these researchers did find modest effects when they looked at how cocaine exposure differentially affected boys and girls developmental outcomes. For instance, they found that boys who were exposed to cocaine had lower IQ scores and lower scores on a shortterm memory subscale than nonexposed boys, exposed girls, and nonexposed girls (Bennett et al., 2002). Thus, prenatal cocaine exposure was found to be detrimental to the global intellectual functioning of boys but not girls. Although this effect for boys did occur, it seems that this may also be explained by environmental factors (such as low IQ of the mother), and therefore there may not be that much truth behind the crack baby label. Nevertheless, regardless of the truth behind these labels, many of them do influence people s perceptions of the labeled person to some extent. For instance, Stern and Karraker (1989) performed a study that looked at a number of gender labeling studies and found that labeling an infant male or female elicits sex-stereotypic responses from adults and children. In other words, adults and children to some extent seem to have preconceived notions about how infants should behave according to what gender they are. For example, one study included in this review of gender labeling studies asked parents to describe their newborn right after it was born (such that the only information they had about the baby was its gender), and they found that the parents rated girls as littler, softer, finer-featured, and more inattentive than boys (Stern & Karraker, 1989). Thus, even with barely any knowledge to go on other than the gender of their child, these parents made judgments about their children in a sex-stereotyped fashion revealing that these labels definitely do exist. Other studies have also shown that labeling can influence individuals perceptions of the people who are given a certain label. For instance, research done by Bromfield, Weisz, and Messer (1986) looked at how labeling a child mentally retarded or not might affect children s

5 The influence of 5 (third, sixth, and ninth graders) judgments of a child s performance on a problem-solving task. Overall, these researchers found that the mentally retarded label had a stigmatizing effect (although different from what they imagined) on how sixth and ninth graders perceived the child s performance on the task; however, the label had less of an effect on younger children (the third graders lacked the cognitive prerequisites for assessing such a label) (Bromfield et al., 1986). Basically, with increasing grade level, the children seemed to go increasingly easy on the child performing the task if he or she had been labeled mentally retarded than if he or she had not (because they believed failure was due to disability instead of low effort). In fact, sixth and ninth graders gave higher ratings of ability to the child performing the task when they believed that he or she was mentally retarded because then failure on the task was less likely to be blamed on a lack of effort (Bromfield et al., 1986). Thus, these results can almost be considered counterstigmatizing because the mentally retarded label appeared to mitigate the possible adverse effects of failure on the judgments and perceptions of older children (but not younger children). Whereas people s perceptions of the mentally retarded child were marked by benevolence (rated child higher in ability when child was labeled retarded rather than normal) in the Bromfield et al. (1986) study, a completely different finding emerged when it came to people s perceptions of children who they were told had been prenatally exposed to cocaine. In fact, a study done by Thurman, Brobeil, and Ducette (1994) investigated the perceptions that teachers and teachers assistants had about this label by having them watch a video of two children one who was prenatally exposed to cocaine and one who was not (participants were not told which one was normal and which one was exposed). The researchers placed participants into three groups and all the groups watched the same video but were told different things about

6 The influence of 6 the children (one group was told that both children were normal, another group was told that both were prenatally exposed to cocaine, and the final group was told that one child was normal and one was prenatally exposed to cocaine) (Thurman et al., 1994). The study found that, when it came to the actual exposed child, subjects who were told that both children were nonexposed rated this child more positively than the subjects who were told that both children were exposed or that one child was exposed and one was not; however, when it came to the actual nonexposed child, subjects who were told that both children were exposed rated this child more negatively than the subjects who were told that both children were not exposed or that one child was exposed and one was not (Thurman et al., 1994). Therefore, it seems that the label of prenatally exposed to cocaine does hold devastating stigmatizing effects, even though recent studies have found that prenatal cocaine exposure is typically low or nonexistent on intellectual and behavioral outcomes (Bennett et al., 2002). In general, these studies seem to show evidence for a number of different labeling effects. Hence for the most part it seems that labels do influence people s (children and adults) perceptions and judgments of other people. As a result, in this study, the purpose was to investigate how certain labels (such as the cocaine label or the gender of the child) along with other factors (the amount of information about the child and the gender of the rater) might cause differences in participants ratings of toddlers overall performances and ability to focus on instructions on a standard cognitive task. Thus, this study hypothesized that telling half of the participants that the toddlers had been prenatally exposed to cocaine and the other half that the children experienced normal, healthy births would cause differences in participants ratings of the child (even though all the children seen in this study were normal, healthy children). For instance, previous research has shown that these labels affect professional s evaluations of

7 The influence of 7 preschoolers performance so this study attempts to see if a similar pattern will be observed with undergraduate evaluators. The label of gender was also analyzed by seeing if the gender of the children affected how participants rated their overall performance and ability to focus on instructions on the task (it was hypothesized that participants may rate male and female children in a sex-stereotyped fashion). Previous research has also questioned whether raters judgments may be influenced by the amount of information they receive about the person that they are to judge (Thurman et al., 1994). Therefore, in this study it was expected that varying the number of times participants watched the children perform a task (participants saw children perform both one and three trials of the task) would also influence participants judgments of the children s performance. Finally, the gender of the rater was looked at as another factor because previous studies have shown that, for example, the rater s gender may cause them to have a same-sex preference (e.g. maybe male participants will rate male children as higher in overall performance and more able to focus on instructions) (Stern & Karraker, 1989). Ultimately, these factors were compared to see if they interacted together such that they may have caused an effect on participants judgments of the children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions on the task. Thus, overall, the purpose of this study was to see how certain labels (cocaine exposed or gender) along with other relevant factors (gender of rater and amount of information) would influence participants ratings of children s performance on a standard cognitive task. Methods Participants The participants in this study were 60 students, 27 females and 33 males, who attended a small liberal arts institution in New York. All of these participants were the friends of students enrolled in two separate upper-level Psychology courses and were asked by these students to

8 The influence of 8 voluntarily participate in this study. Each student in the two upper-level Psychology courses asked two of their friends to participate in the study so that they could fulfill their laboratory requirement for the course. Although the students in the Psychology course were expected to have two friends participate, the participants were told that they could choose to discontinue participation at any time during the study. Materials All participants were shown eight separate video clips of three year old children of different sex and races (Caucasian or African American) all of whom showed no apparent disabilities. Half of the children in the clips were males (two males were African American and the other two were Caucasian), and the other half of the children in the clips were females (two were African American and two were Caucasion). The clips used in this study were actually obtained from a longitudinal study of children done at Yale University. The child s parent and a research assistant were also present in each clip. In the clips, the children were asked to perform a standard cognitive task called a delayed response task which attempts to measure a child s memory as well as their ability to inhibit responding. For instance, after watching the assistant hide a toy (a ball, a peanut, a bunny figurine, or a camel figurine) underneath one of two cups, the children were asked to wait momentarily (a screen was put up between the child and the two cups) before they were allowed to show the assistant which cup the toy was hidden under. Half of the clips showed children doing one trial of the task whereas the other half of the clips showed children performing three trials of the task (so the clips were of varying length). In addition, the gender and the race of the eight children were equally distributed over the trials such that both one and three trials included participants ratings of one African American male, one African American female, one Caucasian male, and one Caucasian female (the total scores for both one

9 The influence of 9 and three trials was a mean score that was derived from the average of participants ratings of all four children in each trial). Participants were also given a questionnaire packet in which they rated the performance of each child on a number of different dimensions overall performance, cognitive ability, level of distraction, amount of interaction with parent, ability to focus on instructions, ability to selfregulate, readiness for pre-school, problem solving skills, ability to make friends, and ability to respond correctly after performing 10 trials of the task. Each rating sheet in the packet had the exact same ten items, in which all but the last one was based on a five point Likert type scale (so scores ranged from one to five, except for the last question in which the scores ranged from zero to 10). All the items on the scale were phrased as questions that attempted to determine the subjects perceptions of the child based on the task, and thus asked things such as Overall, how would you rate the performance of the child on the task? or To what extent was the child focused on the experimenter s instructions? A score of one on any item was the lowest rating whereas a score of five on any item was the highest rating; however, the response options varied. For the questions that asked about the children s overall performance, cognitive ability, ability to self-regulate, and problem solving skills the response options ranged from one (very poor) to five (very good). For the questions that asked about the children s amount of interaction with parents during the clip and the extent to which the children were focused on the experimenter s instructions the response options ranged from one (not at all) to five (a great deal). Similarly, for the question that asked how ready the children were for pre-school the response options ranged from one (not at all ready) to five (completely ready). Likewise, when it came to the question that asked about the children s ability to make friends once they begin pre-school the response options ranged from one (not at all easily) to five (quite easily). A little differently from most of

10 The influence of 10 the other response options, for the question that asked about the children s level of distraction the responses ranged from one (very distracted) to five (not at all distracted). Finally, for the last question there were no response options, and it merely asked, if there were 10 trials, how many of those trials the child would respond correctly to (so the responses could range from zero to 10). Procedure Participants were first asked to complete one of two informed consent forms (A or B) which not only described the purpose and procedure of the study but also enabled them to withdraw from the experiment at any time if they chose to do so. The only difference between the two consent forms was that one stated that the children in the video clips were all healthy and experienced normal births (A), while the other stated that all the children were prenatally exposed to cocaine (B). After the participants had signed whichever consent form was given to them by the experimenter, the experimenter read the appropriate instructions to them (according to which consent form they were given A or B) which described the task the child would be completing in the video clips and what it was measuring. Similar to the informed consent forms, the instructions that were read to the participants only differed when it came to whether or not they were told that the children being observed were healthy or were prenatally exposed to cocaine. After being read these instructions, the participants were told to look over the rating sheet in order to see the type of evaluations that they would be making about the child. Next, the participants were shown each individual video clip and following each one were asked to rate the particular child on the rating questionnaire. Subjects were instructed not to rate any of the children while still watching the video clip and instead were told to wait until each individual clip was over to fill out the corresponding rating sheet. Once the participant had completed all

11 The influence of 11 eight rating sheets, the experimenter debriefed them such that they were told in a more in depth way what the real aim of the study had been (they were told that all the children had actually been healthy, and that for the purposes of this study, deception had been necessary). Finally, the participants turned in their rating sheets and their responses were recorded onto summary data sheets which were given to the experimenter. Results In this study, six two-way analyses of variance were completed to determine whether certain variables such as the label the child received (normal or prenatally exposed to cocaine), the number of trials of the task the child performed (one or three), the gender of the child in the clip, and the gender of the rater had any effect on participants ratings of the children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions. Although this study focuses on just two of the 10 possible dimensions that the child was rated on, the results of the other eight dimensions that the participant rated the children on tend to follow a similar pattern. For all analyses, the significance level was set at.05, and post-hoc tests were completed using a Tukey s HSD to determine which differences between the variables were significant. In order to ascertain whether participants ratings of the overall performance of the children in the video clips was influenced by the label the child received (normal or prenatally exposed to cocaine) as well as by the number of trials of the task the child performed, a twofactor mixed design was performed. Although there was no significant interaction between the two variables (F(1, 58) =.07, p =.80) and no significant main effect for labeling (F(1, 58) =.12, p =.73), there was a significant main effect for the number of trials (F(1, 58) = , p <.001). In other words, the label given to the children of normal or prenatally exposed to cocaine did not cause significant differences in participants ratings of their overall performance on the task.

12 The influence of 12 Yet, the number of trials did cause significant differences in participants ratings of children s overall performance on that task such that they rated the children s overall performance higher when they saw the child perform three trials of the task (M = 3.9) rather than one (M = 3.1). Similarly, when looking at these same variables (the label the children received and the number of trials of the task that the children performed) on participants ratings of the children s ability to focus on instructions, a significant main effect was again found for the number of trials (F(1, 58) = 14.02, p <.001). Like participants ratings of overall performance on the task, participants rated the children as more focused on instructions when they saw three trials (M = 3.3) of the task rather than just one (M = 3.0). Again there was no interaction between the label given to the children and the number of trials the children performed (F(1, 58) =.23, p =.64), and there was also no main effect for the labeling factor (F(1, 58) = 1.62, p =.21). Next, a two-way completely repeated analysis of variance was performed which attempted to see if the gender of the child and the number of trials of the task that the children performed would have an effect on participants ratings of children s overall performance on the cognitive task. When these two variables were compared, a significant interaction was found (F(1, 59) = 13.12, MSE =.30, p =.0006) as well as a main effect for the number of trials (F(1, 59) = , p <.001). For instance, when participants judged children after just one trial on the task, there were no significant differences between how people rated the overall performance of male (M = 3.2) and female children (M = 3.0); however, when participants judged children after three trials of the task, female children (M = 4.00) were rated as significantly higher in their overall performance compared to male children (M = 3.73). This interaction between gender of the child and the number of trials on participants ratings of overall performance is exhibited in Figure 1. In addition, a main effect for trials was found such that participants rated children s

13 The influence of 13 overall performance as much higher after seeing them perform three trials of the task (M = 3.9) rather than one (M = 3.1). However, there was no main effect for the gender of the child such that participants did not differ in their ratings of the children s overall performance as a result of the children s gender (F(1, 58) =.09, p =.76). A similar outcome was found when comparing these same variables (gender of child and number of trials) and how they influenced participants ratings of children s ability to focus on instructions. Not only was a significant interaction found between the gender of the child and the number of trials the child performed on the task (F(1, 59) = 23.35, MSE =.42, p <.001), but there was also significant main effects for both the gender of the child (F(1, 59) = 32.6, p <.001) and the number of the trials (F (1, 59) = 14.20, p <.001). Once again, when participants saw the children perform just one trial of the task, there were no significant differences in participants ratings of male (M = 3.0) and female children (M = 3.0); however, when participants saw the children perform three trials of the task, they rated male children (M = 3.74) as able to focus on instructions significantly better than female children (M = 2.88). This interaction between the gender of child and the number of trials on participants ratings of the children s ability to focus on instructions is shown in Figure 2. Furthermore, for the main effect of trials, it was found that participants rated the children s ability to focus on instructions as much better on three trials of the task (M = 3.3) rather than one trial (M = 3.0). For the main effect of child gender, it was found that participants rated male children (M = 3.4) as more able to focus on instructions than female children (M = 2.9). Finally, another two factor mixed design was used which compared the gender of the child and the gender of the rater to see if either of these factors had any influence on participants ratings of the children s overall performance on the task. In this analysis, no significant

14 The influence of 14 differences were found such that it seems that the gender of the rater and the gender of the child seemed to have little impact on participants ratings of children s overall performance on the task. In fact, there was no significant interaction between the gender of the child and the gender of the rater on children s overall performance of the task (F(1, 58) =.05, p =.83) and there was no main effect for the gender of the child (F(1, 58) =.10, p =.75) or for the gender of the rater (F(1, 58) = 1.47, p =.23). Thus, participants ratings of the children s overall performance did not significantly differ as a result of their own gender or as a result of the gender of the children in the video clips. However, when comparing these same variables (gender of child and gender of rater) and their influence on participants ratings of the children s ability to focus on instructions, two significant main effects were found for both the gender of the rater (F(1, 58) = 4.64, p =.04) and the gender of the child (F(1, 58) = 31.15, p <.001). When it came to the main effect for the gender of the rater, it was found that female raters (M = 3.3) rated children significantly more focused on instructions than male raters (M = 3.0). Furthermore, when looking at the main effect for the gender of the child, it seemed that participants rated male children (M = 3.4) as significantly more focused on instructions than female children (M = 3.0). Yet, significant differences in participants ratings of children s ability to focus on instructions did not seem to be a result of an interaction between the gender of the participants and the gender of the children (F(1, 58) =.85, p =.36). Discussion Overall, after examining the results from the analyses that were performed, it seems that participants judgments of the children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions were less affected by the labels (especially the cocaine label) and the participants gender, and

15 The influence of 15 they were more affected by the amount of information that they saw on the child (one or three trials of the task). For instance, a surprising finding was that labeling a child prenatally exposed to cocaine did not seem to have a negative impact on participants ratings of their overall performance and ability to focus on instructions on the task. In other words, the children that were labeled normal were not rated any more positively than those labeled prenatally exposed to cocaine. In fact, these results are inconsistent with the findings of Thurman et al. (1994) who found that labeling a child prenatally exposed to cocaine negatively affected the way that child was perceived. However, Thurman et al. (1994) also proposed that if their participants had had repeated opportunities to observe the children that the possible effect of the label may have diminished. Due to the fact that in our study participants did have the chance to see some of the children perform repeated trials of the task, this may be one reason why there was no significant labeling effect found. For instance, for both aspects of the children s performance (overall performance and ability to focus on instructions), the children were given higher ratings when the participant saw three trials of the task rather than just one. This seems logical because the more trials participants saw certain children perform; the more comfortable they most likely felt with making a judgment about them (and their judgments may have been more accurate). Hence going along with what Thurman et al. (1994) proposed, it seems that with greater exposure to a child (seeing more than one trial of the task), participants were able to reject the label-based hypotheses that they formed about the child s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions on the task. In other words, it seems that with more information on the child, the label became less of an issue for participants. In addition, another reason there may have been no cocaine labeling effect is that none of the children in our study were actually exposed to cocaine (whereas in the Thurman et al. (1994) study one of the children was). In other words,

16 The influence of 16 participants who were told that the children were prenatally exposed to cocaine could have thought that the children were performing the task as well as any normal child would and hence rated them no differently than the participants who were told the children were normal. All in all, it seems that participants had more differences in their ratings of children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions as a result of the number of trials they saw rather than as a result of the cocaine label. As opposed to the cocaine label, the gender of the child (gender label of male or female) did have some effect on participants ratings of their overall performance and ability to focus on instructions on the task. In addition, the gender of the child in conjunction with the varied number of trials seemed together to produce significant differences in participants ratings of the children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions. For instance, participants did not rate male and female children differently when it came to either their overall performance or their ability to focus on instructions for one trial of the task; however, for three trials of the task, participants rated female children higher in overall performance than males but rated males higher in ability to focus on instructions than females. These results could reflect the fact that female children actually did perform better overall on the task than male children and that male children actually were more focused on instructions than female children; yet, it could also be that participants preconceived gender-based expectations influenced them to rate these children in sex-stereotyped ways. For instance, previous studies such as one referenced by Stern & Karraker (1989) found that parents rated infant boys as more attentive than infant girls revealing a similar gender bias as the one found in this study. Following this same interpretation, it could be that participants also had a preconceived belief that female children are smarter (perform better overall on cognitive tasks) than male children. Furthermore, similar to studies discussed in

17 The influence of 17 the Stern & Karraker (1989) article, it seems that with brief exposure to the children (one trial) the well-educated participants in this study may have really tried to avoid reacting to infants in a sex-stereotyped fashion; however, with more frequent encounters (three trials) it may have been harder to avoid sex stereotyping effects (making them more noticeable in participants ratings). All in all, it seems that these results could either be explained by a gender labeling effect or they could be a result of the fact that male and female children actually differed in their overall performance and ability to focus on instructions for this task. For the most part, it seems that the gender labeling effect may be more dependent on the number of trials (as seen in previous analyses) and less dependent on the gender of the rater. For example, inconsistent with the findings of Stern and Karraker (1989) which found that there was an occasional tendency for a same-sex preference in subject s ratings of male and female children on certain characteristics, this study found no such effect. In other words, the gender of the rater did not seem to cause them to rate male and female children differently in overall performance or ability to focus on instructions on the task (no significant interactions were found between the gender of the rater and the children s gender for the two aspects of this task). A possible reason for this could be due to the nature of the task in which it may not have evoked strong sex-stereotypic responses in the rater because it was simply a standard cognitive task (e.g. if it had been some kind of math task instead, the raters most likely would have been more inclined to respond in a sex-stereotyped fashion by rating the males higher on the task than the females). Thus, because this task seems to be pretty gender neutral, participants may also have been less inclined to rate their own sex as having a better overall performance and being more able to focus on instructions than the opposite sex. Although participants did rate male children as once again being better able to focus on instructions than female children, this may have

18 The influence of 18 occurred even on this neutral cognitive task because this is less an aspect of the task and more of an aspect related to the characteristics of distractibility and attentiveness (which often have sex stereotypes attached to them). However, overall it seems that the rater s own gender and the gender of the child did not have an effect on the raters judgments of the children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions for this task (which differs from previous findings that have found same-sex preferences in raters). In general, it seems that the cocaine label had less of a stigmatizing effect than the label of gender on participants ratings of children s overall performance and ability to focus on instructions. This was particularly true when the gender of the child was paired with an increased amount of information on the child, such that the more the information the participants had about the children, the more significant the gender labeling effects. Potential problems with this study may account for the lack of certain effects. For instance, it seems that a major limitation of this study is that participants received no compensation for their participation causing there to be a lack of motivation to really focus attention on the study at hand. This may have lead to rash responses in which participants merely tried to complete the study as quickly as possible without concentrating or putting much thought into their ratings of the children. In addition, another limitation of this study is that the rating scale was not standardized and thus may not be very valid or reliable. Many of the questions were extremely broad and vague which may have lead participants to perceive what was being asked differently. In fact, a cocaine labeling effect might have been found in the present study if a more standardized measure had been used. Thus, one thing that could be done in future studies is to use a more standardized scale for rating the children. Another way of obtaining a more significant cocaine labeling effect in future studies would be to have some participants read an essay which states that children who

19 The influence of 19 are prenatally exposed to cocaine are negatively affected, others read a different essay which states that they are just like normal children, and another group read a control essay that just talks about the abilities of children in general in order to see if these essays might influence participants perceptions of supposed cocaine-exposed children. In addition, future studies might also use older children and have them do a harder, more gender-biased task. In this way, participants will be able to more easily recognize when a child shows a certain deficit because the task will be harder (so mistakes will be more obvious), and participants may also respond in a more sex-stereotyped way (rate children according to gender labels) if the task is more genderbiased in nature. Finally, a future study that looks at how the race of the children in addition to certain labels may affect participants perceptions of the children s performance on some task would be interesting as well. Hence it seems that if future studies implemented some of these ideas, more significant labeling effects might be observed.

20 The influence of 20 References Bennett, D. S., Bendersky, M., & Lewis, M. (2002). Children s intellectual and emotionalbehavioral adjustment at 4 years as a function of cocaine exposure, maternal characteristics, and environmental risk. Developmental Psychology, 38, Bromfield, R., Weisz, J. R., & Messer T. (1986). Children s judgments and attributions in response to the mentally retarded label: a developmental approach. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, Stern, M., & Karraker, K. H. (1989). Sex stereotyping of infants: a review of gender labeling studies. Sex Roles, 20, Thurman, S. K., Brobeil, R. A., Ducette, J. P., & Hurt, H. (1994). Prenatally exposed to cocaine: Does the label matter? Journal of Early Intervention, 18,

21 The influence of 21 Figure 1 Interaction Between the Gender of the Child and the Number of Trials on Participants Ratings of the Children s Overall Performance on the Task Male Female One Three Figure 2 Interaction Between the Gender of the Child and the Number of Trials on Participants Ratings of the Children s Ability to Focus on the Instructions on the Task Male Female 2 One Three