Five- to 9-year-old children’s preferential attention to and memory for stereotypical information

• In Event: Social Preferences in Childhood

Abstract

Racial stereotypes about social status emerge early: many 3.5-year-olds believe that White people have nicer possessions (e.g., Elenbaas & Killen, 2016) and more prestigious occupations (Bigler et al., 2003) than Black people. However, little research has examined the cognitive mechanisms (attention and memory) that contribute to the maintenance of racial stereotypes. The current project investigated whether 5 – 9-year-old children who expressed racial stereotypes about social status showed confirmation bias (H1), preferentially attending to (R1) and recalling (R2) information that is consistent with societal stereotypes, or whether children instead showed enhanced attention to (R1) and memory for (R2) information that violates societal stereotypes (Stahl & Feigenson, 2017, H2). Understanding the relation between racial stereotypes and the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of stereotypes in childhood can inform cognitive-based strategies to interrupt stereotypes before they take firm hold.

In an ongoing study, five- to 9-year-old children (current N = 49, anticipated N = 140, Mage = 7.79) completed a change detection task, where 3 changes were closest to a stereotype-consistent person (e.g., a White person wearing a business suit), and 3 changes were closest to a stereotype-inconsistent person (e.g., a Black person wearing a business suit). We measured participants’ reaction time (RT) to detect each change and then averaged RT separately for changes near stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent stimuli; shorter RTs indicate preferential attention. To measure children’s racial stereotypes about social status, participants completed a wealth-matching task (Olson et al., 2012) which assesses the expression of the stereotype that White people are more likely than Black people to live in a well-maintained house. Memory was assessed by showing participants 8 faces taken from the change detection task (4 stereotype-consistent faces, 4 stereotype-inconsistent faces), and 8 brand new faces. Participants indicated whether each face was old or new and a signal detection score was calculated so that a positive value indicated better memory for stereotype-consistent faces.

Preliminary analyses suggest that children who expressed more racial stereotypes on the wealth-matching task paid more attention to changes near stereotype-inconsistent information, F (1, 45) = 9.88, p = .003, but showed better memory (SE = 0.61, p = .006) for faces previously depicted in stereotype-consistent ways, r = 0.28, p = .006.

These findings suggest that both hypotheses might be correct, but that different cognitive processes are affected by different types of information. Children’s preferential attention to stereotype-inconsistent information might be driven by its violation of their racial stereotype expectations (Stahl & Feigenson, 2017), whereas preferential memory for stereotype-consistent information is aligned with the confirmation bias (Nickerson, 1998). Though connected, attention and memory are distinct systems that do not always work in tandem (Tas & Luck, 2016) and thus could have different relations to different types of information. Although much more research is needed to better understand these complex relations, it is possible that 5- to 9-year-olds are in a transition period where information confirming or violating their racial stereotypes both exert influence, yet attention and memory operate under divergent systems.

Authors

• Yuchen Tian, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Tara Mandalaywala, University of Massachusetts Amherst