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Investigating the Influence of an Individuation Storybook in Early Childhood Education
Hennah Hajari
Faculty Advisor: Catharine Echols, PhD
Racial bias refers to preferences or judgments based on race, often developing in early childhood and shaping how children interact with others. Explicit bias involves conscious stereotypes and attitudes, while implicit bias operates unconsciously, influencing behavior without intent and being harder to change. Perceptual individuation training has shown promise in reducing implicit bias by teaching children to focus on unique features or interests rather than broad racial categories. Unlike mere exposure to diversity, individuation training actively promotes individual-level processing and has been demonstrated to significantly reduce implicit racial bias in preschoolers. Yet, most studies have occurred in controlled lab settings instead of real-world classrooms and there is little information on how to apply it in early education. This thesis assesses whether individuation tasks can be incorporated into a book-based intervention to reduce racial bias in preschoolers and whether such training can realistically be applied in preschool settings. Preschool children were randomly assigned to an individuation condition, where black characters were introduced with different interests, or to a mere exposure condition, where black and own race characters shared the same interest. Changes in implicit racial bias were measured using a preschool-friendly Implicit Racial Bias Test (IRBT) administered before and after the intervention. Results indicated that implicit bias scores increased from pre- to post-test across both conditions, and the individuation activity did not produce greater reductions in bias relative to mere exposure. Exploratory analyses suggested, however, that children with higher community diversity exposure (q2) showed smaller absolute changes in bias, pointing to the potential stabilizing role of real-world diversity experiences.