The assessment of ethnic sensitivity among Northern Ireland schoolchildren

Abstract

The utility of the release from proactive interference paradigm as a technique for the indirect assessment of ethnic sensitivity was explored. Children in Northern Ireland, aged 7 and 11, recalled sets of names that changed in religious affiliation between the third and fourth sets. Only the older age group demonstrated the predicted improvement in recall following change in name type, findings consistent with studies that have taken approaches to the assessment of ethnic sensitivity.

Symbols and labels: Children's awareness of social categories in a divided society

“…Qualitative interviews in the post-accord setting found that some children can identify a limited number of conflict-related social category symbols as young as three years old (Connolly et al, 2002). This finding supports research during the Troubles which found children were sensitised to group symbols and markers, such as colours, occupations, and names (Cairns, 1980(Cairns, , 1987Houston et al, 1990;Jahoda & Harrison, 1975). Collating the markers across this previous work, as well as publications since the Troubles (McKeown & Taylor, 2017), a wide-range of symbols that primary school-aged children might encounter are tested (Reidy et al, 2015).…”

“…For the open sorting task, 38 images (19 pairs of symbols: one hypothesized to be from each community background) were utilized. These images were drawn from previous research on symbols in NI, both during and after the Troubles (Cairns, 1980(Cairns, , 1987Connolly et al, 2002;Houston et al, 1990;Jahoda & Harrison, 1975;Leonard & McKnight, 2011;Moeschberger & Phillips DeZalia, 2014;Sugden & Bairner, 1986), and were also selected to represent a wider range of the social ecology . Image pairs were organized into three subsections: neighbourhoods and flags (7 pairs; e.g., British flag/Irish flag), sports and activities (6 pairs; e.g., Gaelic football/Rugby ball), and community and religion (6 pairs; e.g., Minister/Priest) (see On-line Appendix at Author Identifying Website).…”

Locality Matters: Ethnic Segregation and Community Conflict—the Experience of Protestant Girls in Belfast

“…The authors also found that these attitudes became more polarised with age. Age‐related differences in children's awareness of society's divisions were also found in studies by Cairns (1980), McWhirter and Gamble (1982) and Houston and others (1990), the findings of which reached a broad consensus that children do not develop consistent attitudes towards religion/ethnic discriminations until the ages of 10 and 11 years.…”

Children and Socio‐Cultural Divisions in Northern Ireland

“…The development of social categorization was not influenced by whether children were from the majority or minority group in their neighborhoods. Using a similar name‐recall task, Houston, Crozier, and Walker (1990) confirmed that most children do not acquire the skill of making ethnic discriminations based on names until they were at least 11 years old.…”