Sex differences in the play constructions of pre‐school children∗

Block play and mathematics learning in preschool: The effects of building complexity, peer and teacher interactions in the block area, and replica play materials

“…At least for the narrow age range of participants in our study, other factors, such as building experiences with peers, not age, explained increases in building complexity. Our finding of no gender differences in block structure complexity contrasts with early investigations reporting that boys construct taller, more varied structures (Goodfader, 1982; Leaper and Gleason, 1996), but is congruent with more recent studies reporting no gender differences (Hanline et al, 2001, 2010; Ramani et al, 2014).…”

“…At least for the narrow age range of participants in our study, other factors, such as building experiences with peers, not age, explained increases in building complexity. Our finding of no gender differences in block structure complexity contrasts with early investigations reporting that boys construct taller, more varied structures (Goodfader, 1982;Leaper and Gleason, 1996), but is congruent with more recent studies reporting no gender differences (Hanline et al, 2001(Hanline et al, , 2010Ramani et al, 2014). Similarly, our finding that neither SES nor ethnicity predict block play complexity is inconsistent with early studies reporting that children of historically underrepresented groups generally show play deficits (Lovinger, 1974;Saltz et al, 1977), but is consistent with more recent investigations indicating no ethnic or SES differences in block building (Jirout and Newcombe, 2015).…”

Adolescent boys' and girls' block constructions differ in structural balance: A block-building characteristic related to math achievement

“…A higher percentage of boys than girls built towers that were at least twice as high as they were wide and had at least half of the height above the rest of the construction. There is some support in the literature for Erikson's findings; when focusing on the specific spatial characteristics of the block structures built by the boys and girls, other researchers have shown that boys build towers with greater frequency than girls (Cramer & Hogan, 1975;Goodfader, 1982).…”

“…Instead, the gender differences appear to depend on the type of block-building problem presented. Gender differences favoring males in early childhood samples are more evident in openended, unstructured block-building tasks (Goodfader, 1982;Sluss, 2002), than in either semi-structured tasks that pose more specific problem-solving challenges Reifel & Greenfield, 1982), or in the most structured block-building tasks, in which children are asked to reproduce block structures from a model (Caldera et al, 1999). Thus, gender differences appear to emerge primarily when students are given the freedom to create their own structures.…”