Reports five experiments that challenge the view that young children's understanding of race is based primarily on superficial differences in appearance. Found that young children's inferences about human racial variation involved domain-specific reasoning that parallelled, but were distinct from, common sense understanding of naive biology. (DR)

Two experiments involving 49 3- and 47 4-year-old French preschoolers studied their memories for racial and other social information to test claim that perceptual factors are integral to derivation and representation of racial categories. Results cast doubt on claim that perceptual information is crucial component of racial categories and are more…

Four experiments explored adults' and grade school children's beliefs about inheritability of racial identity. Found that older children and adults believed that mixed-race children possessed black racial features. Also found that children from an integrated school, regardless of race, expected mixed-race children to have intermediate racial…