Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Age Group Labels And Categories Of Preschool Children, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Questions of how young children use “age” groups to understand the social world led to 2 studies exploring the content of preschool children’s age group labels and categories. Study 1 included 32 children aged 2-4 years and determined spontaneous labels for both photographs and dolls representing the life span. Results indicated that children readily labeled all ages using a relatively limited set of terms, but showed less patterned labeling of stimuli representing adults than children. Girls’ labels were more structured than boys’. Older preschoolers showed more differentiated structures than did younger ones and used more kinship terms as labels. Study …