The race of the doll family, and the gender of the child dolls, were matched to the race and gender of each participant.
This effect is supposed to arise because the distractor "doll" activates the already-activated picture translation's name ("dog").
This cultural difference in interactive relationships is important when considering dolls as social conditioning devices for children.
Even when asked to enact the stories with paper dolls, the younger children made literal interpretations of pseudo-homonyms.
The dolls represented family members, and props included household items such as a table and dinnerware, large rock, bed, and car.
Then the experimenter explained that in this game, the child would help make up stories to act out with the bear and dolls.
The child was asked to act out the searcher's movements by moving the doll.
He took the doll and proceeded to guide the child through a sequence of setting up a pretend bath scenario.
