The relative salience of sex, race, age, and glasses in children's social perception.
The relative salience for children of various human facial features was examined in five experiments. The first two experiments were designed to validate the conclusion from previous research (McGraw, Durm, & Patterson, 1983) that the sex of adult faces is more salient than their race or age, and that the presence or absence of glasses is extremely unsalient. Children's spontaneous verbal descriptions confirmed the salience hierarchy of sex, race, age, and glasses. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 were designed to ascertain whether the salience of race, glasses, and age would be stable across potentially relevant subject and task-stimuli differences. There were some salience asymmetries; most notably, black skin was more salient than white skin for both Black and White children. In general, the results of these studies indicate that sex, race, age, and glasses represents a naturally occurring salience hierarchy that is reliably present among children of preschool and early elementary school age.
McGraw
K O
KO
Department of Psychology, University of Mississippi.
Durm
M W
MW
Durnam
M R
MR
D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005139:Eyeglasses; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D012938:Social Perception; D012945:Social Values