Parental Expectations of Achievement as Affected by Children's Height.

Two experiments found support for the proposition that when cognitive cues (knowledge of children's chronological age) conflict with perceptual cues (perceived height), the latter, though inappropriate, are more salient in deter mining adult expectations for achievement. Subjects were four groups of adults differing in age, sex, occupation, and amount of exposure to children. Each subject assigned summer camp chores in varying difficulty to children who dif fered in height and/or age. Analyses of variance indicated that the taller the child, the more difficult the task assigned by adults. Neo-feminists had dispro portionately high expectations for taller but younger girls. Otherwise, there were no differences attributable to stimulus characteristics or to subjects' sex, age, level of education, or number of children. Results are discussed in terms of other conditions in which height and achievement covary, including prematur ity, ordinal position, and gender.