New York: Children may develop a sense of self-esteem even before they begin kindergarten, reveals an interesting research. "We found that by as young as five years of age, self-esteem is established strongly enough to be measured using sensitive techniques," said lead study author Dario Cvencek, research scientist at University of Washington. The study conducted in January 2016 used a newly developed test to assess implicit self-esteem in more than 200 children up to five-year-old. "Some scientists consider preschoolers too young to have developed a positive or negative sense about themselves," study co-author Andrew Meltzoff from University of Washington noted. Until now, no measurement tool has been able to detect self-esteem in preschool-aged children as the existing self-esteem tests require the cognitive or verbal talk. Researchers created a Preschool Implicit Association Test (PSIAT), to measure how strongly children feel positively about themselves. To make the task appropriate for preschoolers, a mix of 234 boys and girls of five-year-old from the Seattle area, replaced words related to the self ("me," "not me") with objects. They used small unfamiliar flags, and where told about "yours" and "not yours". Using buttons on a computer, children responded to a series of "me" and "not me" flags, using words and pressing...
