Although animal characters play an important role in children's literature, little research has assessed how children relate to these characters. The present study, by measuring same-sex associations, examined whether deaf and hearing students could personally identify with neutrally presented animal characters and whether the patterns would be similar or different for female and male students. The results indicated that hearing students made more masculine associations than did hearing-impaired students and that males had more masculine scores than did females. Differential incorporation of cultural and language bias, use of self-referents, and educational implications are discussed.
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