No abstract

The salience of race in cognitive and affective responses to racial differences was measured in 93 preschool children who lived in a virtually all-White community. Photographs of unfamiliar Asian-American, African-American, and European-American children were used to assess the relative salience of race and sex in children's categories and preferences. Results showed that race was more salient than sex when subjects categorized other people but that both traits were equally salient when they classified themselves. In their preferences, sex was the stronger factor in their positive choices, but race was more salient in their negative ones. Children preferred members of groups whom they saw as similar to themselves, but the converse relation between dissimilarity and rejection was not found. Consistency between cognitive and affective responses increased with age.Many thanks to the children, parents, and teachers who participated in this project. I am grateful to Beth Sabino who conducted interviews and to Randi Walsh and Heather Coon who assisted in coding and analyzing the data. I also thank Louise Singleton, Robert Shilkret, Barbara Burns, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

No abstract

Temporary immobilization of the leg serves as a useful model for the brain's adaptive responses to casting, long-term confinement to bed rest and possibly to trauma. As part of a larger program using TMS to investigate changes associated with bed rest, we sought to determine whether casting of the leg causes brain excitability changes measurable with TMS, and the time course of resolution of these changes. In this study, eight adults wore a full leg cast for 10 days. TMS measures of motor cortex excitability were gathered before the cast was placed, and then immediately after cast removal, and 24 and 48 h later. A control group did not wear a cast and underwent the same TMS sessions. Significant excitability changes occurred and peaked at 24 h post cast removal in the TMS experimental group but not the non-casted group.

[764][765][766][767][768][769][770][771][772][773]. The purpose of this study was to analyze how social dynamics in early childhood classrooms change from fall to spring and from early to late preschool. The subjects were 92 preschoolers in age-stratified (3-year-old, 4-year-old, and 5-year-old) classrooms. Their sociometric ratings and peer contact pattems were recorded during the fall and spring. From early to late preschool, children's sociometric ratings became increasingly negative, especially toward cross-sex peers. Their contact patterns showed an analogous decrease in cross-sex contacts, although the changes were not as linear as those in the sociometric ratings. The analysis of group sizes showed that the 4-year-olds spent more time in larger groups than both their younger and older peers did. Group sociometric ratings and contact patterns changed from fall to spring, but individual children showed considerable stability in the sociometric ratings that they gave their peers and in the size and gender composition of their play groups.