| Abstract: | Conducted 4 experiments with 140 3-, 4-, 5-, and 9-yr-olds to examine the cognitive bases of children's judgments of morality. Moral dilemmas consisting of information about a character's motives and the consequences of these actions were devised such that the order, concreteness, and imageability of information were systematically varied. Results show that 5-yr-old males, but not females, favored recent information while the other variables had no impact on Ss' moral judgments. Overall, the number of 5-yr-olds who used motive information was not significantly different from the number who used outcome information. In the 4th study, the reasoning strategy was examined rather than the content of children's judgments. Three distinct strategies of reasoning were observed: (a) focusing on either the motive or outcome to the exclusion of the other, (b) switching focus from one piece of information to the other, and finally (c) considering both aspects of the dilemma at a time. These abilities had significant parallels in a spatial rotation task. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
