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Method

Subjects Twenty-four black and 24 white preschool children, half of which were male and half female, from a local Head Start program and a university preschool program were used as subjects. Ages ranged from 3 years 3 months to 5 years 11 months. At the time of the experiment all of the children from the Head Start group were judged to be from lower-class families. The university preschool children were assessed to be from lower-class to upper-middle-class families. [...]

Procedure The 48 subjects were divided randomly into eight experimental and control groups according to the race of the experimenter and the race and sex of the subjects. Sixteen subjects were assigned to control groups and 24 subjects were assigned to experimental groups. The experimenters were two female students, one black mature undergraduate and one white graduate student. Each subject was seen individually by the same experimenter for five separate sessions. Each session lasted anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes depending upon the subject's learning to criterion or the presentation of the maximum number of picture cards and stories. [...]

[...] Session 1 Phase A: Base-line assessment for both control and experimental subjects. Each of the six 15 x 22 inch Color Preference Animal Series cards were presented two times in serial order with two different, incomplete two- or three-sentence stories. [...]

Phase B: Learning phase with puppets. Each experimental subject was introduced immediately to the puppet that matched his or her racial group. The other puppet was obscured by a curtain. [...] A correct response was always the application of the positive evaluative adjectives to the black animal or the application of the negative evaluative adjectives to the white animal. If a subject did not give a correct response, a correction procedure was used. [...] Following the verbal correction, the next picture stimulus card was presented. [...] At the end of the session, subjects were told they had enough marbles for a toy and were allowed to choose a small toy before leaving the experimental room. Control subjects were given the same puppet introduction as the experimental subjects with the exception that they were told that after playing the game the puppet would give them a toy for giving correct answers. The control subjects were then shown the six cards of the Color Preference Animal Series twice with the same stories and key questions as given the experimental subjects, but no corrections or reinforcements were given during the session. [...]

Session 2 Relearning session with puppet. [...] Experimental subjects received the same correction and reinforcement procedures as used in Session 1 until criterion had been met or a maximum of six trials (36 card presentations) had occurred. [...]

Session 3 Phase A: Base-line transfer phase for control and experimental subjects. The eight cards of the Racial Preference Child Series were presented to all subjects twice in succession with a different story and key questions for each stimulus card. [...] No reinforcement or corrections procedures were used with any of the subjects.

Phase B: Learning phase with puppet. [...] The same correction and reinforcement procedures were employed as used in previous sessions. [...]

Phase B of Session 3 was repeated. The basic procedure of Session 2 was repeated, except that the Racial Preference Child Series cards were used instead of the Color Preference Animal Series cards.

Game-In-Home Phase One half of the experimental subjects took part in a home game procedure during the four-week interval between Sessions 4 and 5. [...] Based upon the procedure reported by Stabler et al. (1969), the children were asked to put the objects they liked under the picture of a smiling-face card and disliked objects under the picture of the frowning-face card. [...] The parents were instructed to put all of the toys identified as liked in the block box and all disliked toys in the white box. Then the child was presented with a match for each toy so hidden and asked to tell which box had the one similar to the one he or she held. Parents were asked to play the game daily during the four-week interval between Sessions 4 and 5 and to record the child's choices. They were also asked to reward correct responses with marbles and to correct incorrect responses. [...]

Session 5 The fifth laboratory session was an exact duplication of Session 3. The response measure for all laboratory sessions was the total percentage of errors per trial. [...]