The Age Group Labels and Categories of Preschool Children

Abstract

Abstract Abstract: Questions of how young children use "age" groups to understand the social world led to 2 studies exploring the content of preschool children's age group labels and categories.Study 1 included 32 children aged 2-4 years and determined spontaneous labels for both photographs and dolls representing the life span. Results indicated that children readily labeled all ages using a relatively limited set of terms, but showed less patterned labeling of stimuli representing adults than children. Girls' labels were more structured than boys'. Older preschoolers showed more differentiated structures than did younger ones and used more kinship terms as labels. Study 2, on 84 children aged 3-5, was a photograph-sorting task that determined the points of transition between age categories as well as subjects' own self-identification by age group. Results indicated that preschoolers used a nonadult method of dividing up the life span.Older children made fewer errors. Age self-identification was congruent with how children sorted photos of unfamiliar peers. However, younger boys and girls differed in their self-identification, perhaps reflecting differences in gender identification processes.ow to make sense of the immensely diverse and dynamic human world around them is a task that faces all young children as they seek to understand social interaction and to gain predictable responses from others. Recent research has shown that even infants and toddlers have more elaborate social networks than was previously realized, comprising relationships with mother, father, siblings, and peers; and certainly by preschool age most youngsters encounter on an almost daily basis a broad array of familiar and unfamiliar people in many different kinds of settings. Yet, because most of the category systems that are important to adults, such as occupation, social class, and ethnic, political, and community affiliation, are too abstract (Furth, 1980), the young child is forced to rely on social categories related to only the most static and overt cues. Hence age, gender, and familiarity are the attrib-

The development of gender differentiation in young children

“…Duveen & Lloyd (1986), for instance, found that while only a low proportion (17 per cent) of their two and a half-to three-year-olds could sort pictures by gender, by age three and a half over 60 per cent could sort by gender. Edwards (1984) also observed some spontaneous use of gender category labels to sort photographic and doll stimuli at ages two to three years, although this was even more clearcut in the three-to five-year-old group. At this age of two-three, correct selfcategorization by gender also occurs.…”

Age estimation of faces: a review

“…Pittenger & Shaw, 1975a;, to the relation between perceived age and characteristics such as attractiveness (Henss, 1991) and kindness (e.g. McArthur & Apatow, 1983-1984, to more systematic investigations of factors that influence perceived age (e.g. Burt & Perrett, 1995;George & Hole, 1995, 1998.…”

On the assumption of fixity in children's stereotypes: A reappraisal

“…Researchers have assumed that at any point in development children's understanding of social categories is based on a particular and specifiable stereotypical content, which is crosssituationally stable, and that stereotypes may change only through more general socialcognitive development. Thus, attempts have been made to specify children's stereotypes of national groups (Barrett & Short, 1992;Lambert & Klineberg, 1967), gender groups (Best et al, 1977), age groups (Edwards, 1984) and ethnic groups (Davey, 1983), at different points in development. However, in the light of results emerging from the studies conducted by self-categorization theorists, it clearly becomes important to explore the issue of stereotype variability from a developmental perspective, a matter to which we now turn.…”