Isolating stereotypical gender in a grammatical gender language: Evidence from eye movements

Abstract

The present study investigates the effects of stereotypical gender during anaphor resolution in German. The study aims at isolating the effects of gender-stereotypical cues from the effects of grammatical gender. Experiment 1 employs descriptions of typically male, female, and neutral occupations that contain no grammatical cue to the referent gender, followed by a masculine or feminine role noun, in a reaction time priming paradigm. Experiment 2 uses eye-tracking methodology to examine how the gender typicality of these descriptions affects the resolution of a matching or mismatching anaphoric pronoun. Results show a mismatch effect manifest at very early stages of processing. Both experiments also reveal asymmetries in the processing of the two genders suggesting that the representation of female rather than male referents is more flexible in counterstereotypical contexts. No systematic relation is found between eye movements and individual gender attitude measures, whereas a reliable correlation is found with gender typicality ratings.

The processing of the Dutch masculine generic zijn ‘his’ across stereotype contexts: An eye-tracking study

“…However, these had been carefully pre-tested drawing from the same population, and they were carefully selected based on their mean and standard deviation (see the Materials and method section for details). Further backing up our claim that the asymmetry we found is meaningful is the fact that this asymmetry has been found in two other eye-tracking studies [58,59] and two priming experiments investigating response times [60] and event-related potentials [61]. …”

“…They found an N400-like effect when a masculine pronoun was presented after a stereotypically female prime, but not when a feminine pronoun was presented after a stereotypically male prime. Reali et al [59], in an attempt to disentangle the effect of a role noun’s grammatical gender and its stereotypicality in German, used descriptions of role nouns in their eye-tracking stimuli instead of the role nouns themselves (e.g., makes appointments , deals with the correspondence in an office as a description of secretary ). They found that following female role noun descriptions, participants had difficulty when the described person (e.g., the secretary) was revealed to be a man.…”

“…One of the possible explanations the authors offered for this lies in the grammatical gender of the described role nouns. Reali et al [59] argue that the role noun descriptions might have activated the role noun itself and therefore its grammatical gender. For stereotypically male role noun descriptions, the grammatically masculine role noun would have been activated.…”

“…Thus, when a male individual is mentioned, processing difficulties occur in a female stereotype context. Reali et al [59] interpreted the fact that this asymmetry had up to that point only been found in languages distinguishing between masculine and feminine grammatical gender as support for this explanation. However, this idea is not compatible with our own results as we did not use descriptions of role nouns, which could have activated the role nouns’ grammatical gender, but instead we used a myriad of activities, most of which cannot be captured by a specific role noun.…”

Gender stereotypes across the ages: On-line processing in school-age children, young and older adults

“…The results showed that children were less likely to think of males engaging in traditional feminine activities ( Henry-nurse ) than the other way around ( Mary-doctor ). As noted above, a similar asymmetry has recently been found in young adults ( Siyanova-Chanturia et al, 2012 , see also Cacciari and Padovani, 2007 ; Irmen et al, 2010 ; Reali et al, 2014 ).…”