Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques
Published on: June 30, 2020
How children learn about sex: a cross-species and cross-cultural analysis
1Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, 11530, USA, josephs@adelphi.edu.
Abstract:
Scattered and not widely disseminated evidence from primatology, anthropology, and history of childhood sexuality support the hypothesis that throughout much of human behavioral evolution that human children have learned about sex through observing parental sexuality and then imitating it in sexual rehearsal play with peers. Contemporary theories of psychosexual development have not considered the possibility that young children are predisposed to learn about sex through observational learning and sexual rehearsal play during early childhood, a primate-wide trait that is conserved in humans but suppressed in contemporary contexts.
Related Concept Videos
Criticisms of the Evolutionary Perspective
Evolutionary psychology provides one explanation for these findings, suggesting...
Socioemotional Experience and Gender Development
Psychosexual Theory of Development
The Five Stages of Psychosexual Development
Freud's psychosexual...
The Ratio of X Chromosome to Autosomes
Normal male Drosophila has a ratio of one X chromosome to two sets of autosomes. In contrast, normal female...
Sex Linked Disorders
Sex-linked Disorders

