Intentionality and knowledge in children's judgments of actor's responsibility and recipient's emotional reaction.

Two conflicting developmental accounts of how mental states are used in evaluating actors are tested by varying actors' intentionality, foreknowledge of outcome, and the values of motive and outcome. In Experiment 1, children judged a recipient's emotional reaction to three types of event: intended outcome, foreseen accident, and unforseen accident. Both 6- and 7-year-olds used intentionality and knowledge in their judgments of good and bad outcomes. Three-year-olds did not distinguish between accidents differing in actors' foreknowledge, but discriminated between intended and accidental outcomes when the accident was unforseen. In Experiment 2, children judged actor's responsibility for accidentally caused bad outcomes. Seven-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, blamed actors for foreseen accidents more than for unforeseen accidents regardless of motive value. The results suggest that children use intentionality before knowledge in judgments of action sequences, and that actor's foreknowledge of an outcome influences children's ability to judge the intended/accidental distinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From objects to quantities: Developments in preschool children's judgments about aggregate amount.

The impact of object boundaries on children's developing quantitative reasoning was examined in a study of children's judgments about aggregate amount. Children at ages 3, 4. and 5 years were asked to help a Cookie Monster get as much to eat as possible by choosing between alternative collections that differed in the number and size of the cookies they contained and also in aggregate amount. Results indicated that children were heavily influenced by the size of individual cookies at 3 years of age but were generally unsuccessful in aggregating size information across multiple cookies until 5 years. The contrast between children's sensitivity to object sizes from an early age and the relatively late achievement of accurate judgments of aggregate amount underscores the significance for quantitative development of the distinction between discrete objects and mathematical quantities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Foreknowledge, caring, and the side-effect effect in young children.

Children and adults often judge that the side effects of the actions of an uncaring story agent have been intentional if the effects are harmful but not if these are beneficial, creating an asymmetrical "side-effect" effect. The authors report 3 experiments involving 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 188) designed to clarify the role of foreknowledge and caring in judgments of intentionality. Many children showed the side-effect effect even if agents were explicitly described as lacking foreknowledge of the outcome. Similarly, when agents were described as possessing foreknowledge but their caring state was unspecified, children more often judged that the negative, compared with the positive, effects of agents' actions were brought about intentionally. Regardless of foreknowledge, children infrequently judged positive outcomes as intentional when agent caring was unspecified, and they gave few attributions of intentionality when agents were described as having a false belief about the outcome. These results testify to the robustness of the side-effect effect and highlight the extent to which children's intentionality judgments are asymmetrical. The findings suggest developmental continuity in the link between reasoning about morality and intentionality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abstraction, Inference, and Acceptance in Children's Processing of an Adult Model's Moral Judgments.

The effects of a common dimension within a model's performance on different aspects of observational learning were examined in two experiments. Children observed an adult female make a series of choices between alternative solutions to hypothetical moral dilemma situations. In the common-dimension conditions, the model either selected behavioral options that consistently reflected some form of social responsibility or picked solutions that consistently reflected the motive of avoiding harm to self. In the no-common-dimension condition, the model chose half social responsibility and half harm-avoidance answers. In Experiment 1 we tested children's ability to recall the model's moral judgments given the presence or absence of a common dimension. In Experiment 2 we examined children's attributions concerning the unobserved behavior of the model and their acceptance of the rule governing her responses as a guide for their own choices. As predicted, the presence of a common dimension facilitated recall of the model's choices, led children to infer that similar consistency would be found in her judgments about other moral issues, and resulted in modifications of the children's own responses to a test of moral reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children use motive information to make trait inferences

The present study investigates children's capacity to understand traits in a psychologically meaningful way. Participants included 18 individuals in each of 4 age groups: kindergarten (ages 5-6), 2nd grade (ages 7-8), 5th grade (ages 10-11), and adult. They heard a series of 6 short stories in which a main character performs an action based on a particular motive (positive, negative, or incidental) that results in either a positive or a negative emotional consequence for another character. Participants evaluated each main character and predicted the character's behavior and mental states in different social contexts. Participants in all age groups, even the 5- to 6-year-olds, made trait inferences that were influenced by motive information. These results provide evidence that young children are capable of more sophisticated reasoning about traits than has been suggested previously.     

Young children's conception of lying: Moral intuition and the denotation and connotation of "to lie."

126 children (aged 4 yrs 2 mo to 5 yrs 11 mo) were told stories in which a protagonist with the intention to communicate truthfully said something false because he himself was mistaken. Ss were asked to judge whether the protagonist should be rewarded or punished for his false statement (moral judgment) and whether he had lied (lexical judgment). Replicating an earlier finding by the present authors (see record 1984-14615-001), there was a high number of inconsistent responses when the moral judgment was elicited first: Frequent subjectivist reward judgments were followed by realist "lying" judgments. Such an inconsistent response pattern was nearly absent when the lexical judgment was elicited first. Here the frequent realist lying judgments led to subsequent realist punishment judgments. Findings show (1) that young children's moral intuition about lying is advanced as compared to their definition to lie and (2) that children's realist definition of to lie carries a strong negative moral connotation that overrides their usual subjectivist moral intuitions. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's recall of television and print news: A media comparison study.

An experiment was conducted (a) to compare children's recall of news information presented either audiovisually or in print, and (b) to establish whether the relative effectiveness of both media in conveying the news is dependent on children's reading proficiency and expectation of a memory test. A sample of 152 4th and 6th graders was presented with a sequence of 5 children's news stories, either in their original televised form or in a printed version. In each condition, half of the children were led to expect a memory test, whereas the other children were not. The results of a cued-recall test indicated that children who had watched the news on television remembered more than those who had received the same news in print, regardless of their reading proficiency or expectation of a memory test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschoolers' attributions of the situational determinants of others' naturally occurring emotions.

Examined preschoolers' use of situational information in forming attributions about others' naturally occurring, spontaneous emotions. Ss were observed and interviewed about the reasons for other children's naturally occurring emotional reactions as well as about their own strategies for ameliorating others' negative affect. Ss were accurate in identifying the situational determinants of others' real emotions, and their strategies for remediating negative affect in others were consistent with the type and attributional basis of the emotion to be altered. Ss used contextual information in significantly different and meaningful ways across and within emotions. For example, causal explanations for others' emotional reactions were significantly less likely to be focused on the emitter's behavior for anger reactions, whereas they were significantly less likely to be focused on the eliciter's behavior for sad reactions. Results are consistent with the conclusion that preschoolers are responsive to contextual information in formulating judgments about others' spontaneous emotions and are discussed in terms of current research concerning children's emotional behavior and reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental analysis of the role of social comparison in self-evaluation.

The use of social comparison information for self-evaluation may be viewed as a major developmental step in children's growing understanding of their competencies and limitations. The 2 studies presented here suggested that children's achievement-related self-evaluations are little affected by relative comparisons until surprisingly late—that is, not earlier than 7–8 yrs of age. In Study 1, 104 1st and 2nd graders performed a task with 3 coacting peers; only the 2nd graders made any use at all of the social comparison information in their evaluative judgments. In Study 2 an attempt was made to maximize the potential for using comparative information by providing a strong incentive to engage in social comparsion of abilities in a situation in which objective information about a success/failure outcome was unavailable. The 90 kindergarten, 2nd, and 4th graders played a game with peers and made competence-related self-evaluations and decisions about future performance. Only the judgments of the 4th graders were consistently affected by the social comparison information. Previous research on the development of social comparison and possible explanations for the developmental trends observed are discussed. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations of conceptions of gender-role transgressions and gender constancy to gender-typed toy preferences.

Examined the relations among preschoolers' gender-typed toy choice, their judgments regarding cross-gender behavior, and gender constancy. Gender-typed toy choice of 87 preschool children was assessed with a measure in which children could base their choices not only on gender but also on attractiveness. Children's judgments regarding cross-gender behavior were measured, and their level of cognitive constancy was assessed. Results indicated that children's level of reasoning, but not their gender constancy level, was related to gender-typed toy preferences. Children with more flexible norms, who could distinguish between moral and social norms, exhibited less gender-typed toy choices than children with rigid norms. Results are discussed in terms of the relation between cognitive aspects of gender typing and gender-typed toy preference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motive–outcome matching and outcome foreseeability: Effects on attribution of intentionality and moral judgments.

46 preschoolers (aged 3 yrs to 4 yrs 2 mo) and 23 college students were asked to make attributions of intentionality to story characters and to make a moral judgment of the character. Positive and negative intended effects were distinguished from unintended ones by the adults as well as by the children. Also, children's moral judgments were differentiated by the level of foreseeability of the effected outcome. Under unforeseeable outcome conditions, actors with negative motives were judged to be less blameworthy, and actors with positive motives less praiseworthy, than their counterparts who brought about foreseeable outcomes. Differences between the judgments of children and adults are discussed, as are implications for research on the development of social causality concepts. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

True or false: Do 5-year-olds understand belief?

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds who use perceptual access reasoning should fail, and older children who use belief reasoning should succeed. The results of Study 1 revealed the predicted pattern in 2 different true belief tasks. The results of Study 2 disconfirmed several alternate explanations based on possible pragmatic and inhibitory demands of the true belief tasks. In Study 3, we compared 2 methods of classifying individuals according to which 1 of the 3 reasoning strategies (reality reasoning, perceptual access reasoning, belief reasoning) they used. The 2 methods gave converging results. Both methods indicated that the majority of children used the same approach across tasks and that it was not until after 6 years of age that most children reasoned about beliefs. We conclude that because most prior studies have failed to detect young children's use of perceptual access reasoning, they have overestimated their understanding of false beliefs. We outline several theoretical implications that follow from the perceptual access hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facilitating children's proportional reasoning: A model of reasoning processes and effects of intervention on strategy change.

In this study, 140 fourth graders were asked to solve proportion problems about juice-mixing situations both before and after an intervention that used a manipulative model or other materials in 3 experiments. Using a manipulative model based on children's prior knowledge about crowdedness and equal distribution was effective in letting children discover a unit strategy, which was useful for solving proportion problems. The model was more effective for those who had an appropriate representation but could not correctly compare juice concentrations than it was for those who didn't have the representation. On the basis of this study, different approaches appear to be necessary to facilitate children's proportional reasoning, depending on the reasoning process (representation or comparison) with which children are having difficulty. Interventions on the basis of the process model and learning that builds on intuitive knowledge are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration theory applied to children's judgments of equity.

Studied information integration in judgments of deservingness and fair shares in 3 experiments using 4–8 yr old children. Even the youngest children had a well-developed sense of equity, and no age trends were found in this respect. Integrational capacity increased with age, but even some of the 4-yr-olds were able to integrate 4 pieces of information. Centration tendencies were absent. At a quantitative level, the data support 3 algebraic models: an averaging model for deservingness, a ratio model for equity division, and an equity integration model for multidimensional equity judgments. These results add to the evidence for a cognitive algebra of children's judgments. The importance of analysis at the level of the individual child is stressed. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of frequency information for trait categorization and behavioral prediction.

Two experiments examined young children's use of behavioral frequency information to make behavioral predictions and global personality attributions. In Experiment 1, participants heard about an actor who behaved positively or negatively toward 1 or several recipients. Generally, children did not differentiate their judgments of the actor on the basis of the amount of information provided. In Experiment 2, the actor behaved positively or negatively toward a single recipient once or repeatedly. Participants were more likely to make appropriate predictions and attributions after exposure to multiple target behaviors and with increasing age. Overall, children's performance was influenced by age-related positivity and negativity biases. These findings indicate that frequency information is important for personality judgments but that its use is affected by contextual complexity and information-processing biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moral reasoning and judgments of aggression.

Examined the role of type of aggression, aggressor intentions, victim consequences, and stage of moral reasoning in the judgments of aggressive acts. 346 high school and college students who scored at Stages 2, 3, or 4 in L. Kohlberg's (1976) moral reasoning system read physical, verbal, or passive aggression scenarios in which the aggressor's intentions were harmful, instrumental, or altruistic and in which the victim's consequences were good or bad. Results indicate that each variable influenced ratings of aggression independently and that type of aggression and stage of moral reasoning interacted with aggressor intentions to influence the ratings. Similar results were found on ratings of inappropriateness. Victim consequences had a strong but independent influence on ratings of both aggressiveness and inappropriateness. It is concluded that stages of moral reasoning in adolescent and adult populations are important when considering judgments of aggression and that the Kohlberg framework can be usefully applied to these types of judgments. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurement as a tool for thought: The role of measuring procedures in children's understanding of quantitative invariance.

Relations between measuring procedures (e.g., counting, aligning) and children's reasoning about amount were explored in two studies. The first compared traditional conservation-like measures with new tasks reflecting the procedures used to measure number, length, and area. Children's judgments of quantitative equivalence did not indicate a general understanding of a given domain (number, length, or area). Rather, difficulty of a transformation for a domain could be predicted from the effects of that transformation on a relevant measurement procedure. The second study looked at circumstances under which preschool children can access a basic length measurement strategy. Three-year-olds were better able to use a stick to find an object hidden in one of two holes than to determine the deeper hole. Results suggest that measurement procedures function as a tool for thought, developing to solve functional problems and continuing to organize the way children reason about amounts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experts' and novices' abilities to detect children's high-stakes lies of omission.

We investigated adults' abilities to detect lies told by 3- to 6-year-old children. Expert forensic interviewers and novices watched videotapes of children who either lied or told the truth about their parent's transgression, rendered a dichotomous judgment of whether the child lied, rated their confidence in that judgment, and rated the children on various characteristics. Adults detected lies with greater than chance—but not impressive—accuracy, regardless of expertise level. Older children's lies were more detectable by experts than were younger children's. Adults were more confident in their judgments about older than younger children. Confidence in lie/truth judgments was not significantly correlated with actual lie detection accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Just world responding in 6- and 9-year-old children.

Investigated the just world effect in children's judgments of moral behavior and whether the effect was produced by a shifting assessment of (a) the victim or (b) the good or bad outcome befalling the victim. 96 kindergarten and 1st-grade girls and 96 3rd and 4th graders were shown 1 or more film segments in various orders in which a girl (a) helped a friend, (b) grabbed candy, (c) found $10, or (d) had a shelf of books fall on her, and were asked to rate how good or bad the outcomes and/or the girl were. The good fortune outcome suggested to both age groups that the girl was good but the misfortune outcome had no analagous effect. Six-year-olds were more likely to judge outcomes lower when they followed bad behavior but were unaffected by good behavior. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prosocial development in middle childhood: A longitudinal study.

Examined change in prosocial moral judgment over a 7-year period; determined whether there are gender differences in the development of prosocial moral judgment; and examined the interrelations of moral judgment, affect (empathy), and behavior in middle childhood. Participants were two groups of children who have been followed for 5 and 7 years and two groups of children interviewed for the first time at either ages 9–10 or 11–22. Hedonistic reasoning decreased with age; simple needs-oriented moral judgments increased with age and then leveled off; most other more sophisticated types of reasoning increased in a linear fashion with age. Modes of reasoning that most explicitly reflect role taking or empathy increased in use with age for girls but not for boys. Empathy was positively related to needs-oriented judgments and to higher-level prosocial reasoning and was negatively related to hedonistic reasoning (depending on the age of the children). Empathy was positively related to donating at 11–22 years of age but not at 9–20 years of age. Relations between behavior and reasoning varied depending on the structure and costs of a specific behavior. The results are discussed in relation to theory and research concerning developmental change in moral reasoning and possible mediators of prosocial development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)