The research described in this proposal is directed towards the dual issues of how gender and race schemas develop in preschool children and how this development has been affected by earlier behavior and socialization experiences. A longitudinal study is proposed that will assess Euro-American and African-American children and their families, beginning when the children age 4 1/2 - 5 until they are 6. The proposed study is a follow-up of an almost completed longitudinal study that began with these same families when their children were 6 months of age. Thus, the proposed data collection, combined with the earlier one, will span the entire developmental range from infancy through formal school entrance, an age period that is pivotal in the formation of race and gender learning. This data set will be unique because the longitudinal sample is multiethnic and socioeconomically diverse, because both gender and race schemas are examined in the same children, and because it permits investigation of how learning in the infancy and toddler periods relates to subsequent preschool attitudes and behaviors. In addition to this sample, 60 cross-sectional cohort African-American and Euro-American children (and their families) will be tested at 3, and 60 at 6 years of age, in order to assess possible repeated-testing effects in the longitudinal sample. A multidimensional schematic model is proposed that differentiates four components of gender- and race-schemas, and relates them to a variety of familial variables. Based upon the model, three general issues will be examined: (1) understanding how the multiple components of gender- and related learning are acquired and change over the first 6 years of life; (2) delineating similarities, differences and consequences of race- and gender-schemas, and (3) assessing the relation of early developmental indicators, socialization experiences, and family structure variables to preschoolers' gender and racial attitudes. Because gender and race categories are both central to social development, the proposed data collection will have important theoretical and pragmatic implications for understanding self-identify development, attitudes and future intergroup relations.
