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The CATE (Children's Attitudes Toward the Elderly) was administered to 180 children, 20 at each level from age 3 to age 11. Results suggest that children at all age levels have limited knowledge of and contact with older people. Few children gave positive responses about growing old themselves; most did not perceive being old as positive. Attitudes of children toward the elderly suggest a mixture of positive feelings of affect and either stereotypic or negative attitudes about the physical aspects of age. It was determined that children's concepts of age increase in accuracy as they increase in age. Educational implications include providing accurate information about the elderly and actual contact with older people, enabling children to assess their perceptions of the aging process and how aging affects them, and exposing children to an unbiased look at the attributes, behaviors, and characteristics of the elderly in a wide variety of roles in order to avoid or extinguish the formation of stereotypic, negative attitudes.

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This study explored the effectiveness of a curriculum in fostering children's positive attitudes toward the elderly and their own aging. The curriculum was developed around three major goals: (1) increasing children's knowledge of the elderly; (2) enabling children to assess their own aging positively; and (3) decreasing negative stereotyping of the physical and behavioral characteristics of the elderly. A total of 108 children in kindergarten through the sixth grade received the curriculum; 107 children in the same grades served as the control and did not participate in the curriculum. The test. Children's Attitudes Toward the Elderly (CATE) (Jantz, Seefeldt, Galper, & Serock, 1976), was administered on a pre-post paradigm. Multiple regression analyses were computed to assess the effects of the curriculum on posttest responses on the CATE. The results indicated that the curriculum was effective in fostering positive attitudes toward the elderly as measured by the total score, F (1,209) = 5.28, p <.05; in knowledge of older persons, F (1,209) = 5.41, p < .01; and in changing stereotyped thinking about the elderly. The curriculum, however, did not significantly change children's negative attitudes toward their own aging.

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