Children's communication of the linguistic intergroup bias and its impact upon cognitive inferences

Abstract

The hypotheses that children use language strategically (e.g. as in the Linguistic Intergroup Bias) and with increasing strength with age were supported in an experiment with participants ranging in age from 8 to 19 years. In a second experiment, the impact of biased language use on participants' inferences was examined in a sample ranging in age from 5 to 11 years. It was shown for all age groups that participants' inferences were systematically influenced by the abstractness or concreteness of a message. The implications of these findings for the communication and transmission of stereotypes at an early age are discussed.