‘Gang age’ is associated with which age range and which aspect of development?

Concept — Developmental psychologists name each childhood period after the behaviour that dominates it. In Elizabeth Hurlock’s widely used scheme, the years of late childhood — from the close of early childhood to the onset of puberty — are called the “gang age”, because the child’s social centre of gravity moves away from the family towards a self-chosen, usually same-sex peer group, and acceptance by that group becomes the child’s main concern. The label therefore marks a phase of social development, i.e. socialisation, and not of language, morality or reasoning.

Application — The item asks for the pair — age band plus developmental domain — that the term ‘gang age’ picks out. Late childhood covers the middle primary-school years, so among the bands offered the one lying inside it is 8–10 years, and the domain the label names is socialisation. The pairing asked for is therefore 8–10 years and socialization.

Cross-check — each of the other pairings names a genuine stage-hallmark, but not the one the term ‘gang age’ denotes:

• 3–6 years and language — early childhood, whose most-cited change is the rapid growth of vocabulary and sentence structure.

• 16–19 years and morality — later adolescence; Kohlberg locates most learners of this age at the conventional level of moral reasoning.

• 16–19 years and cognitive development — later adolescence; Piaget places this age in the formal-operational stage of abstract, hypothetical-deductive thought.

Hence the pairing that the term ‘gang age’ stands for is 8–10 years and socialization.