Influence of Language on Thai Preschoolers on Gender Classification
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This study examined the influence of language (gender-specific final particles) on speakers’ gender classification compared to another concrete attribute, namely appearance. The sample consisted of 20 Thai children aged 5-6 years who participated in a set of games with rules created on a tablet computer. They were asked to identify the gender of a game character from three options: male, female, and unsure. The game characters uttered a total of 24 sentences, divided into two conditions: (1) “congruent”: the character had either male or female clothing and hairstyle, and spoke sentences with final particles consistent with their appearance; (2) “incongruent”: a male character spoke sentences with the particle “ka”, or a female character spoke sentences with the particle “krap”. The speech has gender-ambiguous voice traits. A total of 432 responses showed that language had a statistically significant greater influence on gender classification than appearance under the incongruent condition, both in the cases where the male character used the particle “ka”, and the female character used the particle “krap”. Clearly, Thai children's gender classification was based on the gendered final particles rather than appearance. These findings suggest the role of preschoolers’ language and social interactions in shaping their perspectives on categories of things, particularly abstract ones such as gender, which may be a result of knowledge experiences that are stored in the form of words and developed into semantic networks.
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