ool, to encourage them to make judgements about the nature of production techniques such as pacing, music and the use of voices, as well as their judgements about the intended target audience of the advertisement. Huston et al. wished to determine whether children are able to attribute particular production features such as loud music, rapid movement, rapid camera angles and so on to advertisements for ‘masculine’ toys, with the opposite production techniques true of advertisements for ‘feminine’ toys. The theory is that children are able to use these subtle cues in advertisements in order to make gender-appropriateness judgements. The question, which is largely neglected in most studies of this kind, must surely concern the point at which children begin to make associations between production style and gender-appropriateness. Indeed, Huston et al. found that the younger children in their study often needed to be ‘primed’ or ‘focused’ in order to attend to these cues, because they found that a child’s normal ‘ viewing mode’ tended to give more attention to advertisement content (the selling message) rather than the form of delivery (the advertisement characteristics). When, therefore, do children become aware of gender portrayals, role-models and stereotypes. Kolbe and Muehling then move on to consider whether or not children recognise the gender of the person serving as the off-screen announcer (or voice-over). If the children do recognise the voice-over type, the question must then be whether or not this recognition and subsequent judgement affects the evaluation of the product and/or the advertisement. Gender Appropriateness Judgements Firstly, which also forms an element of my own research, Kolbe and Muehling wished to ascertain whether children felt the toy was a preferred play object for ‘boys’, ‘girls’ or ‘boys and girls’. Their ...
