This study investigated the conceptions of other European nationals which were held by a group of 5-10-year-old English schoolchildren, with particular attention being paid to developmental changes in the cognitive and the affective/evaluative aspects of these conceptions. T w o hundred and sixteen children were interviewed about French, German, Spanish and Italian people. Evidence was found to support the proposal that, as more information about groups of foreign nationals is acquired with age, children develop increasingly differentiated nationality concepts composed of clusters of attributes agreed by the children to be characteristic of a particular people. Evidence was also found that affective responses towards foreign peoples can be established prior to the acquisition of factual information about those peoples, and that these affective responses remain relatively stable once they have been acquired. The implications of these findings in regard to the changes which are currently occurring in European human mobility are discussed.In this paper, we report the results of the first study from a larger programme of research which we are currently conducting in order to address these issues. This initial study had the circumscribed goal of attempting to elucidate the nature of the conceptions of four target European peoples (French, German, Spanish and Italian people) held by a group of 5-10-year-old English children. The subsequent studies which we are currently conducting are investigating in greater detail the factors which influence the formation of these conceptions, and the effects of these conceptions upon the children's cognitive processing of and reactions to people from other European countries.A basic assumption underlying our research is that nationality concepts are broad categories which involve a high level of inclusiveness and abstraction. The concept of 'Spanish', for example, must include men, women and children with diverse physical characteristics, from a variety of geographical locations, of different ages, with different occupations, different personalities, and with a variety of different habits and lifestyles. The acquisition of this concept therefore entails the acquisition of information about many different attributes of this group of people, with the full mastery of the concept representing a considerable cognitive achievement.
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