Child Develop

Students at 4 grade levels (grades 4, 6, 8, and 10) evaluated hypothetical male age-mates who were portrayed as normal, hyperactive, antisocial, or mildly mentally retarded. The focus was on behavioral characteristics, predicted outcomes, anticipated peer reactions, recommended parental interventions, and diagnostic labels. The results indicated that the students made social inferences that extended far beyond the specific behavioral information provided. The atypical boys were viewed as substantially more deviant than the normal boy within broad-ranging social, affective, and intellectual domains. Future problems were predicted for all 3 atypical boys, and parental interventions were recommended. Within this global negative perspective, clear distinctions were drawn among the 3 types of atypicality. The mildly retarded boy was viewed as most similar to the normal boys, and the antisocial boy was seen as the most dissimilar. Some gender differences and grade trends also emerged, with females and older students generally expressing more benign views of the atypical youths.

Teachers from grades K through 6 nominated the most physically active and most physically passive students from each sex. Half the schools were attended mainly by low-SES Mexican-American students and half upper-middle-SES Caucasian students. The main finding was that physically active students were more likely to have an older brother than were physically passive students. This effect was independent of sex, grade level, race, SES, and other-sibling combinations. A second study confirmed this relationship when college students rated themselves on the same active-passive dimension.

20 pairs of random visual patterns were used as stimuli to test the curiosity property of complexity at 3 age levels: 5 years, 9 years, and 19 years (college students). Stimuli were constructed according to a modified Attneave technique; in accordance with this procedure, stimuli varied in complexity from 3 to 8 sides. Each was paired with a standard 4-sided figure and presented at each of 4 temporal exposures. For each pair, the subject chose 1 of the stimuli to look at again. There was a tendency on the overall for the complex figure to be chosen more frequently; the effect of lengthened exposure time did not alter the likelihood of a complex choice at each age level.