Paula
Barnsley, while attending a Lethbridge Broncos junior hockey game in
the early 1980s, apparently lost interest in the spectacle in front of
her and began to read the game program. Paula noticed that most of the
players were born in months that fell at the beginning of the calendar
year. This began a thirty-five year (so far) collaboration on relative age between Paula's
husband, Roger, and myself. Paula, shortly after her discovery, gave up her
career as an educational psychologist, and went into law - a puzzling
decision. At about the same time, Simon Grondin, a graduate student in
Psychology at Laval University, made a similar observation about
relative age effects among players in the Quebec Junior Hockey League.
We published our findings in
English,1 and Simon and his
colleagues published theirs in
French.2 This being a grand
example of the twain not meeting, we did not hear about each other for
some years. When we did, we put on a joint symposium on relative age at
the 1993 conference of the Canadian Psychological Association.
The relative age effect, is strikingly
evident in activities that are competitive and where performance is
highly correlated with age and maturity. As noted above, the relative
age effect in sport was first noted among elite level ice hockey
players. These findings demonstrated that for major junior leagues and
the National Hockey League, player birth dates decreased in frequency
from January through December. It was theorized that this relative age
effect arose from the consequences of grouping young boys for entry
into organized minor hockey, thereby producing a one-year age range for
the participants. As size, speed, and coordination
are highly correlated with age, older players within the age-group
will, on average, show superior performance. Thus, it can be said that
maturity had been mistaken for ability by coaches, peers and the
individuals themselves. The resulting expectations that are created for
individual children creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that provides
age-advantaged children with greater self-confidence and regard by
others. The opposite will likely hold for those younger than their
group-mates, with adjustments to poorer initial performance likely
including lowered self confidence and self-esteem. One consequence that
has been found is an increased drop-out rate for those disadvantaged by
age in the past,3 suggesting that given the choice, younger children will seek to leave
or avoid an activity in which their competitive position is hampered by
their relative age. Predictably, the relative age effect has also been
found in other competitive sports such as
baseball,4 world class
soccer,5 and American
football.6 Some of our work has
shown that the effects extend to emotional
development7 and
suicide.8
It should be noted that schooling
shares many of the structural characteristics of children's sports
programs. Children are age grouped for entry into school, are rated
according to achievement, and are placed in different programs with
different curricula and learning options based on these measures of
performance. In line with this logic, a large body of literature has
consistently reported a strong effect of the age of school entry on
academic achievement. For example, school children with a relative age
advantage are more likely to show higher achievement, to be placed in
programs for gifted children,9 and to be placed in more challenging educational streams or
classes.10,11 Children with a
relative age disadvantage, are more likely to be retained ("failed")
for an additional year in the same school
grade,12 to be referred for
psychological assessment,13 and
to be placed in a specialized group or provided with a diagnostic label
for remedial instruction.14,15
As a consequence of these findings, many have suggested that parents
should postpone school entry for those younger children whose birthday
places them near the "cutoff" for their age group. The result of such
action would place the children in question among the eldest of their
eventual classmates, rather than the youngest. This contradicts an
earlier tendency of parents to try and arrange early admission for
children who were actually too young to make a particular
cutoff.16
Theory. The proposed causal
chain from birthdate to differences in achievement, self-regard, and
suicide involves the following steps: First, relative age produces
differences in achievement that are due to maturation, not ability.
Second, these differences lead to variation in self-esteem and
confidence. Third, low self-esteem and lack of self confidence are
associated with a child's inability to compete with his or her
classmates leading, respectively, to depression and hopelessness.
Finally, depression and hopelessness, which are generally regarded as
the essential
ingredients of suicide,17,18
become precursors of self-harming behaviour. |