Stigma building blocks: how instruction and experience teach children about rejection by outgroups

Gaining an understanding of intergroup relations and outgroup rejection is an important childhood development. Children learn about rejection by outgroups via their own experiences and external instruction. A comparison of the impact of experience and instruction on first-, third-, and fifth-grade children's evaluations of rejection by outgroups in a minimal-groups paradigm suggests that the relative impact of experience and instruction differs as children age. In Study 1, younger children were more influenced by instruction, and older children were more influenced by what they experienced for themselves. In Study 2, younger children were more influenced by instruction, even when that instruction conflicted with what they experienced; older children were more influenced by their own experiences, even when those experiences contradicted what they were told to expect. These findings suggest that children begin learning about outgroup rejection through instruction but start to rely more on their own experiences as they age.     

Stereotypes and beliefs about different ethnic groups in Spain. A study with Spanish and Latin American children living in Madrid

96 Spanish and Latin American children from 3 grades in Madrid reported their knowledge of positive and negative stereotypes regarding Spaniards, Gypsies, Latin American and Chinese people. Their personal beliefs about these four ethnic groups were also assessed. Stereotypes about Spaniards were perceived as overwhelmingly positive and least negatively while stereotypes about Gypsies were rarely positive and often negative. Spanish children attributed more positive and fewer negative stereotypes to Chinese immigrants than Latin American children did. Older children reported more positive stereotypes about Gypsies than younger children and older Spanish children reported fewer positive stereotypes for their own group than their younger counterparts. Older children's personal beliefs about Gypsies were less consistent with negative stereotypes than younger children's. Older children also showed greater discrepancy of their personal beliefs with positive stereotypes of Spaniards than younger children did. Findings are discussed within the context of socio-cognitive approaches.     

Development of the concept of family in elementary school children

Two studies were conducted to examine the relation of age, gender, and family structure to children's understanding of the concept of family. In Study 1,387 children in Grades 1 through 6 were asked to classify various groupings of individuals as constituting or not constituting a family. Results showed both age and gender differences in children's conceptions of families: Younger children, especially boys, generally used concrete, absolute criteria for defining a family; younger girls were similar to older children in that they were more likely to employ abstract, relational criteria for family definition. Results also showed that children's own family structure was not related to their family definitions. In Study 2, 64 children from the original sample were given a measure of cognitive ability to examine whether differences in cognitive development or differences in socialization were a likely source of younger girls' more advanced understanding. Gender differences in cognitive ability did not emerge, suggesting that the gender effects in Study 1 reflected differences in the socialization of boys and girls. Implications of the findings for understanding children's reactions to family disruption are discussed.     

The Development of Family Loyalty and Relational Ethics in Children

Despite little research investigating how family loyalty and relational ethics develop in children, theorists suggest that children's early family loyalty experiences play a significant role in their future relationships. Twenty-four children, ages 5–10 years, were interviewed to examine developmental trends in children's conceptualizations of family and family loyalty and their reasoning through parent-child ethical dilemmas. Results indicate (a) younger children possess a simpler, more concrete schema for family and family loyalty than do older children and (b) younger children are less able than older children to adopt their parents' perspectives in reasoning through ethical dilemmas.A psychotherapist with T. W. Ponessa & Associates     

Defense use and defense understanding in children

This study investigated the relation between children's use of defense mechanisms and their understanding of those defenses. We hypothesized that, once a child understands how a particular defense functions, the use of that defense will no longer be successful and will be replaced by another defense mechanism that is not yet understood. Defense use was assessed from the Thematic Appreception Test (TAT) stories told by 122 children; defense understanding was determined from the children's understanding of stories portraying defenses. The results indicated that younger children (mean age = 7-8) used the defense of denial more than the older children (mean age = 9-11). Older children understood the functioning of denial and projection better than the younger children. A comparison of children who did and did not understand a defense showed that younger children who understood the functioning of denial were less likely to themselves use denial. Likewise, older children who understood the functioning of projection were less likely to use this defense.     

Children's understanding and experience of mixed emotions

Though some models of emotion contend that happiness and sadness are mutually exclusive in experience, recent findings suggest that adults can feel happy and sad at the same time in emotionally complex situations. Other research has shown that children develop a better conceptual understanding of mixed emotions as they grow older, but no research has examined children's actual experience of mixed emotions. To examine developmental differences in the experience of mixed emotions, we showed children ages 5 to 12 scenes from an animated film that culminated with a father and daughter's bittersweet farewell. In subsequent interviews, older children were more likely than younger children to report experiencing mixed emotions. These results suggest that in addition to having a better conceptual understanding of mixed emotions, older children are more likely than younger children to actually experience mixed emotions in emotionally complex situations.     

Developmental changes in understanding the influence of emotion upon cognitive performance and motivation

In the light of recent research concerned with children's understanding of mind, a study was conducted in order to test the hypotheses (a) that only older children (i.e., 8-year-olds) would understand that emotional states can influence cognitive performance, but (b) that both older and younger children (i.e., 5- and 8-year-olds) would understand its influence upon cognitive motivation. Children were explicitly questioned about the consequences for cognition and motivation of negative affect. Results based on children's predictions and justifications provided substantial support for the hypotheses.Sincere thanks are extended to the teachers and children of Hillside Infant and Junior Schools and Frithwood Primary School, Northwood, Middlesex. We wish also to express our gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Distinctiveness effects in children's long-term retention

In 3 experiments, kindergarten and second-grade children's retention was examined in the context of 2 distinctiveness manipulations, namely, the von Restorff and bizarre imagery paradigms. Specifically, children learned lists of pictures (Experiments 1a and 1b) or interactive images (Experiment 2) and were asked to recall them 3 weeks later. In Experiments 1a and 1b, distinctiveness was manipulated perceptually (changing colors) and conceptually (changing categories or switching to a numeral), whereas in Experiment 2, distinctiveness concerned the interaction (common or bizarre) between the referents. The results showed that (a) older children retained more information than younger children, (b) younger but not older children failed to benefit from numerically distinct information, and (c) distinctiveness in other domains facilitated children's retention. These results highlight the importance of distinctive information in children's retention.     

Children's eyewitness reports after exposure to misinformation from parents

This study examined how misleading suggestions from parents influenced children's eyewitness reports. Children (3 to 8 years old) participated in science demonstrations, listened to their parents read a story that described experienced and nonexperienced events, and subsequently discussed the science experience in two follow-up interviews. Many children described fictitious events in response to open-ended prompts, and there were no age differences in suggestibility during this phase of the interview. Accuracy declined markedly in response to direct questions, especially for the younger children. Although the older children retracted many of their false reports after receiving source-monitoring instructions, the younger children did not. Path analyses indicated that acquiescence, free recall, and source monitoring all contribute to mediating patterns of suggestibility across age. Results indicate that judgments about the accuracy of children's testimony must consider the possibility of exposure to misinformation prior to formal interviews.     

Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale: Two Studies of Convergent Validity

As the field of mental health services shifts its focus to early intervention, the need to develop valid and reliable measures of young children's behavioral functioning is clear. Traditional assessment instruments have focused on deficits, problems, and pathologies to the exclusion of strengths and competencies. However, assessing child strengths provides parents, direct service providers, and educators with a more holistic view of the child's functioning and an understanding of skills from which individualized treatment and education plans may be written. The Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS; Epstein & Sharma, 1998) is a strength-based instrument designed to identify children's behavioral and emotional strengths. The psychometrics of the BERS has been demonstrated through several studies; however, the focus has mainly been on older age students. We sought to assess the convergent validity of the BERS with kindergarten children. The results of these two studies provide further support of the psychometric characteristics of the BERS and indicate its appropriateness with young children.     

The role of conceptual recoding in reducing children's retroactive interference

Reductions in children's retroactive interference were examined with conceptual recoding. Children learned two 10-item lists of toys; items on the 2nd list could also be classified as vehicles. Some children were not told about this 2nd category, whereas others were told either at the end of acquisition or just prior to the retention test 24 hr later. The results showed that (a) children benefited from the recoding instruction, (b) younger but not older children failed to benefit from the recoding manipulation when it occurred just prior to the retention test, and (c) recoding reduced retroactive interference primarily through affecting storage processes. These results provide new evidence concerning the importance of making information distinctive in storage in children's retention.     

Preferences and Children's Use of Gender-Stereotyped Knowledge About Musical Instruments: Making Judgments About Other Children's Preferences

A developmental model of gender-stereotype acquisition (Martin, 1989) proposes that by the age of 8 years children draw upon information about gender-stereotyped interests as well as other children's sex when deciding how much other children would like different activities; younger children rely on sex only when making such decisions. We examined whether the judgments that children made about other children's preferences were different from those that they made about their own preferences for masculine and feminine musical instruments. Three hundred twelve children aged 8–9 years ranked 6 instruments in order of preference, and rated on a 4-point scale how much they would like to play each one. Children were then asked to decide how much other children would like to play each instrument. Only girls' own preferences for feminine instruments differed according to the gender-stereotyping of their most-preferred instrument. Judgments about how much other children would like masculine and feminine instruments did not differ according to those children's gender-stereotyped interest. Children made stereotypical predictions about the preferences of children of unknown sex who played either a masculine or feminine instrument. Implications for a theoretical account of the development of children's gender-stereotypes are discussed.     

The Effects of Thematic Importance on Story Recall among Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Comparison Children

This study examined the recall of televised stories for younger (4-6 years) and older (7-9 years) children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) under two different viewing conditions (toys present/toys absent). Each child watched two Rugrats television programs, once with toys present and once with toys absent. Immediately after viewing a program, the child completed a free recall of the observed story. Comparison children's recall increased more than ADHD children's as importance level increased, and comparison children recalled more information overall than children with ADHD. When toys were present, children with ADHD retold less coherent stories than comparison children, as indexed by smaller correlations between the story units recalled and the order of these units in the story. In summary, children with ADHD demonstrated multiple difficulties in story comprehension. These findings add to our understanding of the differences in higher-order cognitive processing abilities between children with ADHD and comparison children, and suggest important areas of focus in designing more effective academic interventions for children with ADHD.     

Developmental changes in information central to artifact representation: evidence from 'functional fluency' tasks

Research suggests that while information about design is a central feature of older children's artifact representations it may be less important in the artifact representations of younger children. Three experiments explore the pattern of responses that 5- and 7-year-old children generate when asked to produce multiple uses for familiar (Experiments 1, 2) and novel (Experiment 3) named objects. Results showed that while older children tended to produce responses based on the known design function of the object, younger children's responses were more flexible, though still constrained by the mechanical structure of the object. Only when ignorant of a novel object's design function did older children produce more varied functions than did younger children. These results suggest that representations supporting object function undergo change across this period of development, with information about design assuming more importance later than it does earlier.     

Children's attitudes toward physically handicapped peers

The present study is a detailed exploration of children's attitudes toward physically handicapped peers. Subjects were 52 children, 26 handicapped and 26 nonhandicapped, ranging from 2nd through 8th grade. Along with 11 drawings depicting various physical impairments, children were administered an adjective checklist measure to assess affective responses toward target pictures, a preference questionnaire to assess behavioral intentions toward target pictures, a ranking task to assess perceptions of the physical capabilities of the target pictures, and a social desirability questionnaire to assess the children's desire to appear socially acceptable. In general, results indicated that older nonhandicapped children were more positive toward handicapped peers than were younger children and this was especially true for target pictures they perceived as least physically active. In addition, handicapped children held less positive attitudes toward the more “normal” target pictures than did nonhandicapped children. The present findings have important implications for the mainstreaming of physically handicapped children.     

Perceptions of Forgetfulness in Adulthood

Abstract

In two experiments, we examined younger and older participants’ appraisals of memory failures in fictitious characters portrayed as younger (in their 20’s to 30’s) or older (in their 60’s to 70’s) adults. Participants read vignettes where forgetful behavior had minor or more severe consequences for the target character (Experiment 1) or for the character and others in the social environment (Experiment 2). Participants rated potential causes of the forgetfulness and opinions concerning the target character’s cognitive health. In Experiment 1, an age-based double standard was observed, where both age groups rated ability as a cause of forgetting more often for older than younger characters. Ratings of forgetfulness as a sign of mental difficulty, need for memory training, and professional evaluation were also higher for older compared to younger characters. In Experiment 2, the Attribution Type by Target Age interaction effect was replicated. Ability and effort contributed to the significance of the interaction, confirming the reliability and generalizability of the age-based double standard. Forgetfulness was rated as a sign of mental difficulty more often for the older than younger characters, replicating Experiment 1. In both experiments, the consequences of the forgetting had a large impact on the attribution and opinion ratings for younger and older forgetful characters. These data suggest that people of all ages evaluate forgetful characters in light of situational outcomes as well as ageist presumptions of cognitive frailty in later life.     

The Effects of Children's Goals for Learning on Video Game Performance

Children's goals for learning on their video game performance and patterns of attention were examined. Before playing a game, second- and fifth-graders were instructed to adopt an evaluative, process, outcome, or no specific goal focus while playing. Children were then interviewed about their game strategies and the game features they paid attention to while playing. Older children and more frequent players showed better performance. Among frequent players, process goal instructions facilitated performance. Younger children's interview references to process goals also were predictive of better performance. Their references to attention strategies, however, were predictive of poorer performance while older children's references to attention strategies were predictive of better performance. These findings highlight the efficacy of process goals for learning among younger and older children.     

Memories of Mickey Mouse: Young children recount their trip to disneyworld

What young children remember and how long they retain such information are crucial issues for the study of young children's memory. In this research, these issues were examined by asking children who visited Disneyworld at 37 or 49 months of age to recall their experience. Half of the children were interviewed 6 months after their trip, and the remaining children were interviewed after 18 months. Surprisingly, there were no effects for age or retention interval on the amount children recalled; all children recounted a great deal of accurate information about their Disneyworld experience. However, older children's reports were more detailed than younger children's, and older children tended to recall more information spontaneously than did younger children. Finally, there is some suggestion that children who talked about their Disneyworld experience more frequently with their families subsequently recounted more information during the memory interview. Implications for these findings are discussed.     

Siblings' Direct and Indirect Contributions to Child Development

Abstract— Since the early 1980s, a growing body of research has described the contributions of sibling relationships to child and adolescent development. Interactions with older siblings promote young children's language and cognitive development, their understanding of other people's emotions and perspectives, and, conversely, their development of antisocial behavior. Studies address the ways in which parents' experiences with older children contribute to their rearing of younger children, which in turn contributes to the younger children's development. Finally, by virtue of having a sibling, children may receive differential treatment from their parents. Under some conditions, differential treatment is associated with emotional and behavioral problems in children.     

Value Differentiation Between Enemies and Allies: Value Projection in National Images

The current study aimed to investigate value projection between Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, and Swiss as a function of their group's stance toward the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. Drawing on image theory, we assumed that images—operationalized by value projection—would be a function not just of features of the target group, but of the rater group's relationship with the target group. Value projection can be seen as an indicator of (de)humanization as values represent goals and desirable behaviors of a person. We therefore expected higher projection to ally than to enemy groups, whereas we expected no difference in projection to out‐groups with neutral relations. Results show that allies did indeed project Security and Power to a higher degree to each other than to enemies, and enemies showed no, or even negative, projection onto each other. The ally of the enemy (Americans) was projected less negatively by Palestinians than vice versa, pointing to the higher complexity of third‐party images as opposed to the more classical ally and enemy images. As expected, Swiss students showed almost no difference in projection to the different out‐groups. These results confirm that the relationship between groups (e.g., alliance, enmity) rather than a consensual view of particular nations determines images.