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Little research has investigated children’s perceptions of gender ambiguous individuals who are not part of a binary gender category. Five- to 8-year-olds were tested to determine whether appearance or conceptual information (i.e., occupation information, trait information) was prioritized when grouping a gender ambiguous target with other people. Children heard two stories with verbalized or no verbalized gender information. The target shared conceptual qualities with a character of stereotypical gender appearance (conceptual match) and appearance qualities with a character of gender ambiguous appearance (appearance match). Participants were asked which character the target should be friends with and which character’s novel activity preference the target shared. Results indicated that the inclusion of verbalized gender information did not systematically change children’s response patterns. However, older children prioritized trait information over appearance information, while younger children valued trait and appearance information equally. For the occupation story, children did not overwhelmingly prioritize occupation information, indicating that they might not regard occupation information as much as trait information when making predictions about gender ambiguous people. Implications include a better understanding of children’s beliefs about individuals who exist outside of strict social categories, which can inform ways to combat negativity and promote acceptance of people who deviate from group-based expectations.

Tattooing is becoming part of mainstream culture and there are indications that perceptions of people with tattoos are changing. As the number of people with tattoos increases, the likelihood of a child having a teacher with a visible tattoo also increases. How a child perceives a teacher influences how he or she feels about and ultimately responds to that teacher. There is a significant gap in research that focuses on children’s perceptions of people with tattoos, especially children’s perceptions of teachers with tattoos and the possible impact tattoos can have on the educational environment. Results from this study indicated that, in general, students did not perceive the female teacher with a tattoo differently than the female teacher without the tattoo, nor was their performance on a measure of achievement significantly impacted by the presence of the tattoo. Additionally, exposure to parental tattoos did not result in more positive ratings of the teacher with a tattoo by students. Limitations of this research and implications for future research will be discussed.

Children live their lives across various social settings, including homes, kindergartens, schools and different kinds of institutions. The different contributions of this book focus on children's perspectives, and on how children learn and develop through taking part in activities in social communities such as families, peer groups, classrooms, and day care institutions. This collection illustrates different ways of dealing with varying social contexts, and the research presented involves questions about children's world-making, anchored in children's daily lives. The studies are inspired by Vygotsky's theory of development (1998), as well as childhood sociology. One of the aims has been to problematice time, change, continuity, developmental trajectories, and transitions in order to identify novel ways of discussing 'development' in relation to different trajectories through childhood and youth.

This thesis examines children and young people's ideas about mental illness. Frequently, previous research in this area has suffered from methodological flaws or a limited theoretical framework. Qualitative methodology was utilised in this thesis in order to both gather the range of ideas that children have about mental illness, and to propose a theoretical model to explain the development of these ideas. In the first study, 63 children (comprising 4 age groups: 6 - 7, 9 - 10, 12 - 13, and 16 - 18 years old) participated in focus group discussions. Groups were presented with 3 illustrated vignettes, each depicting a story about an adult with a mental health problem (schizophrenia, agoraphobia, or depression). A thematic analysis was used to examine the ideas that children expressed in these discussions. Analysis found that children have a wide range of ways of explaining the characters' behaviours. Children and young people's ideas were grouped into 5 main categories: 'medical explanationsà ¢ , 'psychiatric explanations', 'abnormal behaviour explanations', 'psychological explanations', and 'event explanations'. Following this, a second study was conducted to focus on children's ideas about causes and treatments for mental illness. 36 children (ages 9 - 10, 12 - 13, and 16 - 18) were interviewed individually. Participants were presented the same 3 vignettes and asked to create a story that explains why each character has their problem and how their problem is resolved. Grounded theory methods were used to analyse the stories, with 6 primary categories and 1 secondary category (' psychological explanations') emerging. All stories included a cause from one of the 6 primary categories, and sometimes that primary category also led to a thinking problem (from the secondary category). Resolutions to the stories either came from the same primary category as the suggested cause, or alternatively, treatment came from one of the treatments included in the secondary category (

Summary: Victimized children display debilitating thoughts, feelings and behaviors that may originate in family interactions and generalize to the peer group, causing children to be victimized by aggressive peers. This study tested the hypothesis that children's mental representations of their family experiences cause them to have reactions during peer interactions that lead to their victimization by peers. It was suggested that a perception of the self as helpless and a perception of the parent as controlling or threatening causes children to exhibit debilitated behavior among peers that contributes to their victimization. Also, certain perceptions of self and parent may contribute to aggression toward peers. Results for boys were in accord with hypotheses, in that both victimization and aggression were predicted by interactions of perceptions-of-self with perceptions-of-parent. Results for girls were less predictable from the formulation., Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2000.

This study was designed to explore the ability of children in primary grades to recognize and manipulate planar shapes. The broad aims of the project were to explore the nature of the knowledge one needs to recognize planar shape, ascertain how this knowledge is acquired and examine other factors that contribute to a child's ability to recognize planar shapes. To sample children from five to twelve years, subjects were drawn from preschool, together with Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7. To maintain a balance of sex distribution two girls and 2 boys were chosen from each class. The research instrument used for this particular project was the clinical interview. A set of eight tasks, centred around the right-angled trapezium, was presented to each child. Each interview was videotaped and the videotape used to categorize the responses. The tasks were designed to provide insight into how the child perceived the right-angled trapezium and the way this initial perception affected his/her performance on subsequent tasks. The study supported Glaser's (1984) and Ausubel's (1985) belief that the spatial knowledge needed for the recognition of shapes should be well organized and accessible. The research findings also supported the bel~ef of Vinner (1983) and Hershkowitz (1989) that visualization plays an important role in geometric concept attainment. The research however also indicated that a flexible approach to tasks or a willingness to try different ways of solving tasks, affected one's ability to recognize shapes. In summary, the empirical results indicated that a child's approach to a task, a child's perception of a shape, the way one assimilates new spatial knowledge to existing knowledge, the presentation of shapes and the teaching process itself all play a role in affecting a child's ability to recognize planar shapes.

The purpose of the study was to determine the difference in concept perception in preschool children using story reading through several different media presentations. Specifically, it was to ascertain if significant differences did exist in concept perception of children ranging in age from 3 years 6 months to 5 years 6 months under three different methods of presentation: adult story reader present and reading story, filmstrip and cassette, and cassette recorder alone. Three stories were selected for the investigation with consideration being given to comparable content and length of the stories. All stories depicted the seasons and involved plants, animals, and human beings. Three trained professionals with earned degrees in the areas of child development or in child psychology evaluated the stories for appropriateness. A questionnaire and scoring scale was devised by the investigator and were evaluated by the three trained professionals.

Piaget's theory of intellectual growth describes the child as the architect of his own thinking. The child's initial thought patterns are perception-oriented interpretations of the surrounding world. As his experiences continue they are transformed internally by the child's previous storage level of understanding. This introspection leads to a gradual but spectacular change in the basis of thinking, there is a move from semilogic to rationality. Each act of understanding involves an element of invention which has had no existence before either in the external world or in the subject's mind. The concept of invariance is central to Piaget's theory. It concerns the individual's recognition that a change in an external dimension does not imply a change in quantity unless something has been added or removed. The fieldwork section of this study provides an examination of some of the known necessary conditions for conserving behaviours. The New Zealand sample followed the pattern outlined by Piaget; many young subjects were included in the group of non-conservers, a middle group of borderline conservers were more likely to conserve quantity than volume, and the third group of subjects were assured conservers and included fewer younger subjects in their number. These findings are used to illustrate some aspects of the current literature on the necessary conditions for invariance. The child, who has access to a wide range of recognizable operational variety in his environment, whose experience has undergone some internalized ordering, who has confidence to explore his world, whose present equilibrated structures can make an adjustment to a mismatch, is likely to develop conserving behaviours. The significance of the semiotic function rather than the specific dominance of language is discussed in the study. Piaget recognizes the extending role of language but demonstrates that invariance can be established without language but not without operations. The sufficient conditions

The purpose of the experiment was to determine and compare the effects of recency of habituation of varied auditory, visual, and audio-visual stimuli on the perceptual investigatory responses of kindergarten children. Two delay intervals (5-minutes and 5-days) and three types of habituation (auditory, visual, and audio-visual) were studied. Factorial analysis of variance made it possible to analyze the independent and interactive effects of these variables on the investigatory responses of the children during 5-minutes of testing. The population of the study consisted of 144 children drawn from three church-related kindergartens in Greensboro, North Carolina. Thirty six of these children, with an equal distribution of boys and girls, were randomly selected from each kindergarten. Within each of these groups, subjects were assigned to six experimental conditions: (1) Short delay auditory habituation (SA); (2) Short delay audio-visual habituation (SAV); (3) Short delay visual habituation (SV); (4) Long delay auditory habituation (LA); (5) Long delay audio-visual habituation (LAV); and (6) Long delay visual habituation (LV). The remaining 36 children, with an equal number of boys and girls, were assigned to a "replacement" group. Children were randomly selected from the latter group to replace experimental subjects, who, for various reasons were unable to complete the experiment. The stimuli, varied sounds and color-pictures, were presented with a simple motor task in which pressing manipulanda (rubber bulbs) produced auditory and visual stimuli. Prior to testing sessions, subjects in the SA and LA groups were exposed to auditory stimuli; subjects in the SAV and LAV groups were exposed to auditory and visual stimuli; and subjects in the SV and LV groups were exposed to visual stimuli. Subjects in the SA, SAV, and SV groups had a 5-minute delay interval between the preliminary (habituation) sessions and testing sessions, whereas subjects in the LA, LAV, and LV groups ha