Bringing together some of the most prominent and active researchers in this field, this state-of-the-art review covers children's understanding of family, school, economics, race, politics and gender roles with an advanced overview of developments in this under-represented area of social psychology. Recent changes and trends in research are summarized and explained in terms of a progression from the Piagetian stages model of development to the current emphasis on socially-mediated sources of information, socio-cultural context and children's own naive theories about societal phenomena.