Suchergebnisse

This review presents a theoretical account of the development of possibility beliefs in childhood through two developmental pathways, centered around the experience and understanding of our intentional, goal-directed actions. Pathway 1 (Naïve Optimism to Calibrated Realism) can be seen as early as the first year, as increased coordination of action through motor experience leads infants to a graded notion of what is possible and how much effort is required to achieve goals. Infants also incorporate social information into their earliest possibility beliefs, referencing caregivers to guide them in uncertain situations and learning from role models to effectively calibrate effort. Pathway 2 (Naïve Pessimism to Creative Transcendence) emerges from ages 4 to 7. At first, preschoolers correctly distinguish possible and impossible actions but are overly pessimistic about limits on possibility. With age, children use their imaginations to overcome hypothetical limits. This account suggests that realistic beliefs about what we can possibly do are in place in early childhood, preceding later developmental milestones in self-concept, identity, self-efficacy, achievement-orientation, and self-goals. This leaves open questions about mechanisms of change, how possibility beliefs contribute to later self-beliefs, and whether interventions that combine action experience with creative idea generation can increase the sense of the possible in children and adults.

AbstractRecent work identified a shift in judgments of moral praiseworthiness that occurs late in development: adults recognize the virtue of moral actions that involve resolving an inner conflict between moral desires and selfish desires. Children, in contrast, praise agents who do the right thing in the absence of inner conflict. This finding stands in contrast with other work showing that children incorporate notions of cost and effort into their social reasoning. Using a modified version of Starmans and Bloom's (2016) vignettes, we show that understanding the virtue of costly moral action precedes understanding the virtue of resolving inner conflict. In two studies (N = 192 children, range = 4.00–9.95 years; and N = 193 adults), we contrasted a character who paid a personal cost (psychological in Study 1, physical in Study 2) to perform a moral action with another who acted morally without paying a cost. We found a developmental progression; 8‐ and 9‐year‐old children and adults recognized the praiseworthiness of moral actions that are psychologically or physically costly. Six‐ and 7‐year‐old children only recognized the praiseworthiness of moral actions that are physically costly, but not actions that are psychologically costly. Moreover, neither adults nor children inferred that paying a cost to act morally required having a moral desire or resolving inner conflict. These results suggest that both adults and children conceptualize obligation as a direct motivational force on actions. They further suggest that costly choice—a hallmark of moral agency—is implicated in judgments of praiseworthiness early in development.

AbstractThe success of human culture depends on early emerging mechanisms of social learning, which include the ability to acquire opaque cultural knowledge through faithful imitation, as well as the ability to advance culture through flexible discovery of new means to goal attainment. This study explores whether this mixture of faithful imitation and goal emulation is based in part on individual differences which emerge early in ontogeny. Experimental measurements and parental reports were collected for a group of 2‐year‐old children (N = 48, age = 23–32 months) on their imitative behavior as well as other aspects of cognitive and social development. Results revealed individual differences in children's imitative behavior across trials and tasks which were best characterized by a model that included two behavioral routines; one corresponding to faithful imitation, and one to goal emulation. Moreover, individual differences in faithful imitation and goal emulation were correlated with individual differences in theory of mind, prosocial behavior, and temperament. These findings were discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the mechanisms of social learning, ontogeny of cumulative culture, and the benefit of analyzing individual differences for developmental experiments.

ABSTRACTMoral decisions often involve dilemmas: cases of conflict between competing obligations. In two studies (N = 204), we ask whether children appreciate that reasoning through dilemmas involves acknowledging that there is no single, simple solution. In Study 1, 5‐ to 8‐year‐old US children were randomly assigned to a Moral Dilemma condition, in which story characters face dilemmas between two prosocial actions, or a Personal Cost control, in which story characters face decisions between a matched prosocial action and a self‐interested action. Children were then presented with two reasoners who made the same judgment, but one confidently endorsed one moral action, and the other hesitantly acknowledged both actions. As they aged, children became more likely to prefer the uncertain reasoner's "way of thinking" in the Moral Dilemma compared to the Personal Cost condition. They also inferred that the uncertain reasoner was nicer and more trustworthy than the confident one. In Study 2, when both reasoners acknowledged the dilemma and differed only in their level of uncertainty, 5‐year‐olds preferred the acknowledgment to be accompanied by a confident decision, 6‐ and 7‐year‐olds preferred it be accompanied by uncertainty, and 8‐year‐olds showed no preference. These results show that, before the age at which children can resolve dilemmas successfully on their own, they recognize and value others who approach dilemmas with appropriate humility.

AbstractYoung children use pedagogical cues as a signal that others' actions are social or cultural conventions. Here we show that children selectively transmit (enact in a new social situation) causal functions demonstrated pedagogically, even when they have learned and can produce alternative functions as well. Two‐year‐olds saw two novel toys, each with two functions. One experimenter demonstrated one function using pedagogical cues (eye contact and child‐directed speech) and a second experimenter demonstrated the alternative function using intentional actions towards the object, but without pedagogical cues. Children imitated both functions at equal rates initially, indicating equal causal learning from both types of demonstration. However, they were significantly more likely to enact the pedagogical function for a new adult not present during the initial demonstrations. These results indicate that pedagogical cues influence children's transmission of information, perhaps playing a role in the dissemination of cultural conventions from a young age.

AbstractHow do children learn about the structure of the social world? We tested whether children would extract patterns from an agent's social choices to make inferences about multiple groups' relative social standing. In Experiment 1, 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 36; tested in Central New York) saw an agent and three groups (Group‐A, Group‐B, and Group‐C) and observed the agent choose between pairs of individuals from different groups. Across pairwise selections, a pattern emerged: The agent chose individuals from Group‐A > Group‐B > Group‐C. Children tracked the agent's choices to predict that Group‐A was "most‐preferred" and the "leader" and that Group‐C was "least‐preferred" and the "helper." In Experiments 2 and 3, we examined children's reasoning about a more complex pattern involving four groups and tested a wider age range. In Experiment 2, 5‐ to 10‐year‐old children (N = 98; tested in Central New York) used the agent's pattern of pairwise choices to infer that the agent liked Group‐A > Group‐B > Group‐C > Group‐D and to make predictions about which groups were likely to be "leaders" and "helpers." In Experiment 3, we found evidence for social specificity in children's reasoning: 5‐ to 10‐year‐old children (N = 96; from 26 US States) made inferences about groups' relative social but not physical power from the agent's pattern of affiliative choices across the four groups. These findings showcase a mechanism through which children may learn about societal‐level hierarchies through the patterns they observe over time in people's group‐based social choices.Research Highlights
Children in our sample extracted patterns from an agent's positive social choices between multiple groups to reason about groups' relative social standing.
Children used the pattern of an agent's positive social choices to guide their reasoning about which groups were likely to be "leaders" and "helpers" in a fictional town.
The pattern that emerged in an agent's choices of friends shaped children's thinking about groups' relative social but not physical power.
Children tracked social choices to reason about group‐based hierarchies at the individual level (which groups an agent prefers) and societal level (which groups are privileged).

Young children make sophisticated social and normative inferences based on proportional reasoning. We explored the possibility that proportional cues also help children learn from and about their own generosity. Across two experiments, 3- to 4-year-olds had the opportunity to give either 1 of 4, 1 of 3, 1 of 2, or 1 of 1 of their resources to an individual in need. We then measured children's subsequent prosociality by looking at sharing behavior with a new individual. The more proportionally generous the initial action, the less likely children were to share selfishly in the second phase. Our results suggest that children make sense of their own actions using proportional cues and that giving children experience with difficult, prosocial actions increases the likelihood of their recurrence.

AbstractResearch from the perspective of parents, educators and mental health professionals has documented the negative impacts of pandemic isolation on children, but few studies have sought children's own perspectives on this difficult year. The current study aims to provide a first‐person perspective on children's psychological health by asking children directly about their experiences of isolating at home. We interviewed 28 seven‐ to eleven‐year‐olds in early days of lockdowns with follow‐ups 6 months later. Children answered questions about family, school, friendships and feelings about the changes in their lives during lockdown. Children's reflections showed resilience, adaptability, positive appraisals and an ability to maintain meaningful social connections. This data underscores the value of including children's narratives to better understand the pandemic's lasting effects on their lives.