Social class differences produce social group preferences.

Some social groups are higher in socioeconomic status than others and the former tend to be favored over the latter. The present research investigated whether observing group differences in wealth alone can directly cause children to prefer wealthier groups. In Experiment 1, 4-5-year-old children developed a preference for a wealthy novel group over a less wealthy group. In Experiment 2, children did not develop preferences when groups differed by another kind of positive/negative attribute (i.e. living in brightly colored houses vs. drab houses), suggesting that wealth is a particularly meaningful group distinction. Lastly, in Experiment 3, the effect of favoring novel wealthy groups was moderated by group membership: Children assigned to a wealthy group showed ingroup favoritism, but those assigned to a less wealthy group did not. These experiments shed light on why children tend to be biased in favor of social groups that are higher in socioeconomic status.

Infants' goal anticipation during failed and successful reaching actions.

The ability to interpret and predict the actions of others is crucial to social interaction and to social, cognitive, and linguistic development. The current study provided a strong test of this predictive ability by assessing (1) whether infants are capable of prospectively processing actions that fail to achieve their intended outcome, and (2) how infants respond to events in which their initial predictions are not confirmed. Using eye tracking, 8-month-olds, 10-month-olds, and adults watched an actor repeatedly reach over a barrier to either successfully or unsuccessfully retrieve a ball. Ten-month-olds and adults produced anticipatory looks to the ball, even when the action was unsuccessful and the actor never achieved his goal. Moreover, they revised their initial predictions in response to accumulating evidence of the actor's failure. Eight-month-olds showed anticipatory looking only after seeing the actor successfully grasp and retrieve the ball. Results support a flexible, prospective social information processing ability that emerges during the first year of life.