The present study compared the sex-typed preferences for playmates and play styles in children referred for concerns about their gender identity development (199 boys, 43 girls) with that of controls (96 boys, 38 girls). Each child was administered the Playmate and Play Style Preferences Structured Interview (PPPSI) developed by Alexander and Hines (Alexander, G. M., & Hines, M. (1994). Child Development, 65, 869-879). In the two single dimension conditions (playmates and play styles), the controls significantly preferred same-sex playmates and same-sex play styles whereas the gender-referred children significantly preferred cross-sex playmates and cross-sex play styles. Effect sizes ranged from 1.56-2.78. In the conflict condition (which required a choice between same-sex playmates and cross-sex play styles vs. cross-sex playmates and same-sex play styles), there was a general indication of a hierarchical preference for the preferred play style in the single dimension condition as opposed to the preferred playmate except for the gender-referred boys, who showed an inverted pattern. For the gender-referred group, the PPPSI data were significantly correlated with other measures of sex-typed behavior, providing evidence of predictive validity. The PPPSI also discriminated between probands threshold and subthreshold for the diagnosis of gender identity disorder. The results were discussed in relation to both basic and applied issues in the assessment of sex-typed behavior in children.

University students, masked to group status, judged the physical attractiveness of girls with gender identity disorder and clinical and normal control girls, whose photographs were taken at the time of assessment (mean age, 6.6 years). Each student made ratings for all girls for five traits: attractive, beautiful, cute, pretty, and ugly. A multivariate analysis of variance showed a significant group effect. Multiple comparisons of the significant univariate effects showed that the girls with gender identity disorder had significantly less attractive ratings than the normal control girls for the traits attractive, beautiful, and pretty who, in turn, had less attractive ratings than the clinical control girls. Girls with gender identity disorder and the normal controls also had less attractive ratings than the clinical controls for the trait cute. Correlational analyses showed that age was substantially negatively related to the attractiveness ratings in the group of girls with gender identity disorder, but was considerably less so in the two control groups. The extent to which the group differences in attractiveness were due to objective, structural differences in facial attractiveness vs. socially created, or subjective, processes is discussed.