The effects of color on children's food choices were investigated. Subjects were 120 children who were equally distributed among each of the combinations of age (5 vs. 9 years old), sex (male vs. female), food type (3 types of candies), and color (red, green, yellow, and orange) in a counterbalanced, factorial, analysis-of-variance design with repeated measures on subjects. A significant main effect for color indicated that children preferred foods that were red, green, orange, and yellow, in that order. Interpretation of this main effect was not interfered with by main effects or interaction terms involving age, sex, or food type, which served as alternative rival hypotheses.

The effects of cultural choices on food cravings and aversions of 160 pregnant women were assessed in four ethnic groups (n = 40 each): Black, Cambodian, Hispanic and White. Subjects were participants in a federal supplemental food program, the Women, Infants and Children Program (WIC), in Long Beach, California, a metropolitan area of the United States. Questionnaires were administered in Cambodian, English, or Spanish as appropriate. Cambodians craved significantly more meat and spicy/salty foods than the other three groups. Increased educational level and number of years spent in the U.S. correlated positively with significantly more cravings for traditional western American foods (that is, chicken, peanut butter and hot dogs). Aversions for less typical American foods (such as fermented fish and pigs' feet) increased with advanced educational level and years of residence.

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Recent advances in theory and research imply that additional distinctions are needed in terms of peer relationships. Theoretically, peers traditionally have been considered to be any group of children who are interacting with one another in a definable place and at a particular time. Recent advances in theory, however, have led to a redefinition of "peers" as children who display behaviors of a similar level of complexity and who hold similar social status in their group (Hartup, 1978; Lewis & Rosenblum, 1975). Although written in terms of similarities among children, this new definition implies that children are not a homogeneous group. Obvious though this point is, it was not a part of earlier definitions. Recent theory also suggests that children form relationships by selecting playmates according to a number of dimensions, the most relevant of which for purposes of the present study are age and sex (Lewis & Feiring, 1979). Although the fact that preschool-age children prefer playmates similar in age and sex to themselves has long been known (Challman, 1932; McCandless & Hoyt, 1961), recent research clearly demonstrates that general social interaction behaviors among young children vary as a function of whether playmates are of the same or different ages. For example, when preschool-age children were paired with familiar, samesex peers who were either similar (i.e., 2 months of age) or different (i.e., 16 months) in age, Lougee, Gruenich, and Hartup (1977) found