Suchergebnisse

AbstractHelp‐seeking is a common strategy for children to cope with daily stress. However, little is known as to how children make help‐seeking expectations during early development. The current study examined the effects of situational stress levels and help‐seekers' competence on children's expectations of help‐seeking behavior and willingness from age 4 to 6. We manipulated situational stress levels and help‐seekers' competence in a social expectation task. Children were tested to determine their expectations of help‐seeking behavior and willingness. Two hundred and twenty‐one Han Chinese children aged 4–6 from a city in East China participated in this study. We found that 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds expected the incompetent help‐seekers to seek support more than the competent help‐seekers regardless of situational stress levels. However, 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds made expectations as such only in the low‐stress condition. These results suggest that both situational stress levels and help‐seekers' competence influence 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children's help‐seeking expectations, and the influence varies across ages.

AbstractThe present study examined whether perceptual individuation training with other‐race faces could reduce preschool children's implicit racial bias. We used an 'angry = outgroup' paradigm to measure Chinese children's implicit racial bias against African individuals before and after training. In Experiment 1, children between 4 and 6 years were presented with angry or happy racially ambiguous faces that were morphed between Chinese and African faces. Initially, Chinese children demonstrated implicit racial bias: they categorized happy racially ambiguous faces as own‐race (Chinese) and angry racially ambiguous faces as other‐race (African). Then, the children participated in a training session where they learned to individuate African faces. Children's implicit racial bias was significantly reduced after training relative to that before training. Experiment 2 used the same procedure as Experiment 1, except that Chinese children were trained with own‐race Chinese faces. These children did not display a significant reduction in implicit racial bias. Our results demonstrate that early implicit racial bias can be reduced by presenting children with other‐race face individuation training, and support a linkage between perceptual and social representations of face information in children.