The main purpose of this study was to address this question: When preschool children are exposed to novel objects, will their tactual and verbal information-seeking about these objects and the amount of information they remember about these same objects be influenced by whether an adult labels them as things "for girls" or "for boys"? Thirty-six white children (18 girls, 18 boys; mean age 66.2 months) participated in a semi-structured play session during which they were allowed to explore six stimulus objects, randomly arranged in three sets of object pairs (pizza cutter, burglar alarm; metal phone index with pop-up cover, magnetic nail finder; plastic number puzzle, hole puncher). At the outset of each session the experimenter named each object for the child and asked him/her to repeat and remember the name, then she randomly labeled one set of objects "for boys", one "for girls", and one "for both boys and girls" so that in each session each child was simultaneously exposed to a (a) same-sex, (b) opposite-sex, and (c) both sexes labeling condition. Later, children were asked to recall the names of objects. Findings revealed that children tactually explored less frequently, asked fewer questions and recalled the names of objects less frequently when they were labeled for the opposite sex than when they were labeled either for their own sex or for both sexes. Children also explored less and recalled the names of objects less frequently when they were labeled for both sexes than when they were labeled for their own sex. The findings also revealed that younger children's recall appeared to be slightly affected by the two labeling conditions, both sex and opposite-sex, while the other children were affected by only the opposite-sex label condition. (Author/MP)