This article presents an exercise in ‘cognitive class analysis’ by tackling the question of when young children first develop the ability to perceive and judge stereotypical representation of class identity. With the aid of a specifically designed visual methodology, 82 children aged 5 to 12, were asked to combine a series of figures into a set of ‘class families’, to assign different amounts of money to these families, to attribute an occupational status to the parents of each family and to indicate their most and least likeable family. Results show that children prove capable of perceiving and judging class stereotypes at a younger age than previous studies have suggested. A considerable number of 5- and 6-year-olds already demonstrate the ability to classify people on the basis of differences in dress and appearance and effectively recognize these classifications as based on differences in class position. In addition, visible markers of class-status also appear to play a role in shaping children’s preferences for different types of families and playmates.

本文通过解决幼儿何时首先发展感知和判断班级身份刻板印象的能力这一问题，提出了“认知班级分析”中的一项练习。借助专门设计的视觉方法，要求82名5至12岁的儿童将一系列数字组合成一组“阶级家庭”，为这些家庭分配不同的金额，以赋予他们职业地位。每个家庭的父母，并指出他们最和最不喜欢的家庭。结果表明，与以前的研究相比，儿童被证明能够在较小的年龄感知和判断班级的成见。已经有相当数量的5岁和6岁儿童能够根据穿着和外观的差异对人进行分类，并根据班级位置的差异有效地识别这些分类。此外，可见的阶级地位标记也似乎在塑造儿童对不同类型的家庭和玩伴的喜好方面发挥了作用。