1. Results Introduction The present study focuses on adult attitudes toward children. Many examples of discrimination against children in Western societies contrast with the general view that people have a positive attitude toward children. We want to test here whether implicit measures of attitudes reveal less favourability toward children than conventional self-report measures. In a web-based pilot study, 300 participants completed an Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz, 1998) and self- report scales assessing their attitudes towards children vs. adults. Results indicated an explicit preference for children, t(300)=14.51, p<.01, and an implicit preference for adults, t(147)=-2.48, p<.05. To further clarify the nature of this explicit-implicit asymmetry, we asked participants to complete a Simple Association Test (Blanton, Jaccard, Gonzales, & Christie, 2006). Like the IAT, the SAT measures strengths of associations between target categories (children and adults) and valence words (positive and negative) by assessing response times in categorization tasks. In the SAT, these 4 associations are isolated in 4 separate blocks. In each block, one target category is associated to one valence category, and this association is contrasted with a joint category of neutral words (e.g., furniture and middle). Positive and negative attitudes toward the two targets can then be analysed separately. Method Results Conclusions References Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., Gonzales, P. M., & Christie, C. (2006). Decoding the implicit association test: Implications for criterion prediction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 192-212. Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480. Implicit Mental Representations of Children and Adults Caroline Leygue, Gregory R. Maio, Johan Karremans, Jochen E. Gebauer and Elspeth Webb School of Psychology, Cardiff University, United Kingdom 39 participants (29 females and 10 males) completed a children vs. adults SAT. Implicit measure (see Figure 1): (1) 6 practice blocks (2) SAT: 1 block “children” and “good” words vs. “neutral” words; 1 block “children” and “bad” words vs. “neutral” words; 1 block “adults” and “good” words vs. “neutral” words; 1 block “adults” and “bad” words vs. “neutral” words. Explicit measures: (1)“Thermometer” scale of attitude towards children, (2) two 10-item scales of attitude toward children and adults, (3) open-ended measure of emotions felt when thinking about “the typical child”. Scoring procedure: Trials greater than 10 s and participants for whom more than 10% of trials have latency less than 300 ms were deleted. Mean latencies for each block were computed and log-transformed. A General Processing Speed score was computed from the 6 practice blocks. Positive (C+) and negative (C-) implicit attitudes toward children, and positive (A+) and negative (A-) implicit attitudes toward adults were computed from the 4 SAT blocks. Correlation matrix: We analysed the correlations between the four attitude constructs, controlling for the general processing speed. The correlation between C+ and C- was positive, r =.41, p <.05. The correlations between A+ and A-,, r =.31, ns, between C+ and A-, r =.09, ns, and between C- and A+, r = -.05, ns, were non significant. Prediction of explicit measures: We regressed explicit measures scores onto the two implicit measures of attitude toward children, controlling for general processing speed. Results revealed that participants with less positivity toward children on the C+ index (long RT) expressed more positive attitudes on the thermometer scale, β =.59, t = 2.15, p<.05, while participants with more negativity toward children on the C- index (short RT) indicated a greater amount of negative emotions elicited by children, β = -.47, t = -2.05, p<.05. Preference for children over adults: Scores on the explicit measures revealed a preference for children (M = 3.18, SD = 1.8) over adults (M = 2.37, SD = 1.5), F(1,38) = 6.6, p<.05. Scores on the SAT revealed no significant differences between C+ and C-, F(1,38) = 1.8, ns, between A+ and A-, F(1,38) =.53, ns, between C+ and A+, F(1,38) =.05, ns, or between C- and A-, F(1,38) =.03, ns. BOY Child or un pleasant BOY Child or pleasant Furniture or middle The asymmetry between explicit and implicit measures concerning preference for children over adults was replicated. The results also indicated that positive and negative implicit attitudes toward an object should be considered as different constructs and that implicit attitudes toward children and adults are not bipolar in nature. Acknowledgement & Contact Grant: Maio, G. R., Karremans, J., & Webb, E. (2007-2009). The detection of ambivalence toward children using implicit measures. Economic and Social Research Council. E-mail: LeygueC@cardiff.ac.uk Figure 1: Examples of stimuli presented to participants for the SAT. Furniture or middle