The effect of character similarity on children's learning from fictional stories: The roles of race and gender

A Systematic Review of Modern Measures for Capturing Children's Ethnic and Racial Attitudes, Stereotypes, and Discrimination

In recent years, there have been accelerated efforts among developmental scientists to understand and address children's ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination. For such efforts, using high-quality and context-appropriate measures is critical. However, focused discussions and investigations of measures for capturing children's ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination are scant. Accordingly, we conducted a systematic review of 1,001 measures that were used in 403 journal articles published between 2010 and 2022. Our review was guided by four questions: (1) What types of measures of children's ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination are being used by researchers?; (2) How do measures represent target groups?; (3) In which geographic and demographic contexts are measures being used?; and (4) What evidence do we have about some of the psychometric properties of commonly used scales/tasks? In seeking answers to these questions, we found both strengths and problems with our field's toolkit of measures. Taken together, our review provides an overview of modern measures for capturing children's ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination; offers initial insights about the characteristics and psychometric properties of those measures; and makes recommendations for future efforts in the field. We argue that measurement evaluation is a fertile avenue for future work in our field and that widespread discussions about measurement are necessary to advance the science of how children feel, think about, and behave toward members of different social groups.

Watching Televised Counter-Stereotypes Alone or with Mom: Studying the Effects on Preadolescents' Gender Attitudes and Beliefs

Despite the dominant presence of traditional gender portrayals on television, there is a growing effort to incorporate more diverse gender representations, including in youth television series. The impact of such counter-stereotypical portrayals on preadolescents' gender attitudes and beliefs remains largely unexplored. This mixed-design experimental study among 75 mother-child dyads (Mage child = 10.69, SD = 1.37) examined the effects of watching an episode of an entertainment television program that positively portrays a transgender character, either alone or with the mother. The findings indicated that watching the episode lowered preadolescents' gender essentialism, but did not increase acceptability of and willingness to befriend gender-nonconforming peers. Maternal presence did not further impact the findings. Perceived similarity to and liking of the transgender character did not act as moderators, but had a direct impact on preadolescents' gender attitudes and beliefs. In conclusion, the results suggest that exposure to counter-stereotypes in entertainment television can influence components of preadolescents' gender attitudes and beliefs. Gender-diverse television characters who are perceived as highly similar and likeable appear to be particularly influential.

Young children's science learning from narrative books: The role of text cohesion and caregivers' extratextual talk

One way to support young children's factual learning is through shared book reading (reading books with a knowledgeable other). Many books that teach factual content are narrative in structure, in which factual content is embedded within a fictional storyline. However, there are gaps in our understanding of factors influencing children's factual learning from narrative books. In this experiment, 38 caregivers and their 4- to 5-year-old children from the Southeastern United States participated. Each caregiver read to their child two narrative books on science concepts. The books varied in their levels of cohesion (e.g., drawing connections between textual elements and providing details and comparisons). We coded caregivers' extratextual talk while reading for the extent to which it emphasized science information (informational highlighted talk) or went beyond the text to provide further related information (informational elaborative talk). Children's recall of the books' science and story content was tested in free and probed recall formats. We found that children had higher recall of the story content, even though caregivers emphasized the science content through their highlighted extratextual talk. Caregivers used more elaborative extratextual talk with the low cohesion book, perhaps as compensation for the book's lack of cohesion. However, children's recall of the science content was most strongly predicted by the books' cohesion and caregivers' highlighted extratextual talk. These results emphasize the important role that books' textual features and caregivers' extratextual talk during book reading have on young children's factual learning from narrative books.