The Role of Peers and Siblings in Toddlers’ Developing Understanding of Incompatible Desires

According to previous research, social experiences with other children might explain why three‐year‐olds are already quite proficient in understanding desires but not beliefs as subjective mental states. This study investigated toddlers’ (N = 50) developing subjective understanding of incompatible desires around the age of 3 years (M = 35.5 months) and the associated social factors (i.e., family demographics, peer, and sibling variables). Results indicated a developmental sequence from understanding desires to understanding desire‐dependent emotions with an unexpected positivity bias in toddlers’ prediction of own emotions. A hierarchical regression model revealed that specific social factors (i.e., reported quality of peer interactions and day care attendance) individually contributed to explaining the variance in children's desire‐reasoning skills. Findings are interpreted as supporting a belief–desire asymmetry, and specific social experiences, such as positive peer interactions and desire conflicts, may promote toddlers’ understanding of incompatible desires as subjective mental states.     

Role of Expertise,Consensus, and Informational Valence in Children's Performance Judgments

Two experiments examined the role of expertise, consensus, and informational valence on children's acceptance of informant testimony about the quality of work produced by a target child. In Experiment 1, 96 4‐ to 5.9‐year‐olds and 6‐ to 8‐year‐olds were told about an expert who gave a positive or negative assessment of art or music that was contradicted by one layperson or a consensus of three laypersons. Generally, participants endorsed positive assessments as correct irrespective of expertise and consensus, but older children were more likely than younger children to want to learn from the expert in the future. To examine whether reluctance to accept expertise was due to the negative quality of the information, the expert in Experiment 2 simply stated that additional work was needed. Both age groups selected the expert as correct and reported wanting to learn from the expert in the future. Contributions to social learning models are discussed.     

Triadic Interaction among Newly Acquainted 2-year-olds

Are children as young as 2 years old able to interact in groups of three? The study applied the family triad model first introduced by Parke, Power, and Gottman (1979 ) to the case of peer interaction. In Experiment 1 , the model was refined for use in studies of peer interaction and applied to an existing dataset of 16 triads of newly acquainted 24‐month‐olds. In Experiment 2 , the triadic coding system was further refined and applied to 12 single‐sex triads of newly acquainted 2‐year‐olds. The findings demonstrated that 2‐year‐olds are capable of triadic interaction although the predominant interaction pattern in triads is still dyadic. Contrary to past reports, triadic interaction was more likely to occur when the children were not in conflict. Both girls and boys were capable of triadic interaction.     

‘She is looking at me! Shall I share?’ How Chinese and American preschoolers respond to eye gaze during sharing

Previous research shows that the recipient's verbal communication about desires increases young children's sharing behavior. The current study examined how an adult partner's non‐verbal communication through eye gaze influenced sharing behavior in children from different cultures. We presented one hundred forty‐six 3‐ to 5‐year‐old American and Chinese children with a Dictator Game, in which they were asked to distribute resources between themselves and an experimenter. Children were randomly assigned to three conditions, in which the experimenter alternated her gaze between the child and the items that she wanted, or looked randomly around the room, or left when the child made decisions about sharing but claimed to come back later. Results showed that Chinese children shared more than American children did in the alternating‐gaze condition, but not in the other two conditions; furthermore, the experimenter's alternating gaze influenced Chinese children to be more generous, but had no significant effect on American children. This suggests that compared to American children, Chinese children may be more compliant with others’ requests communicated through a subtle cue of eye gaze. The study demonstrates important differences in sharing behaviors between American and Chinese preschoolers, and these differences are consistent with the cultural constructs of individualism and collectivism.     

Verbalizing a commitment reduces cheating in young children

Children are frequently given rules and permissions that contrast their self‐interest, resulting in cheating behavior. The present study examined whether a verbalized commitment without the word ‘promise’ could reduce cheating rates in young children and whether this technique would be significantly more effective than a simple affirmation to a request not to cheat. Ninety‐nine 3‐to‐5‐year‐olds were randomly assigned to one of three obligation conditions: control, simple ‘okay’, or a verbalized commitment condition. All children played a guessing game in which the experimenter left the room on the final trial and children were instructed not to peek at the toy in the experimenter's absence. Children were asked to agree to the request not to peek (simple ‘okay’ condition), to verbally state that they would not peek (verbalized commitment condition), or were just instructed not to peek (control condition). The verbalized commitment condition significantly reduced cheating rates compared to the other conditions, regardless of age. Furthermore, among those who cheated, children in the verbalized commitment condition took significantly longer to peek compared to the other conditions. Results suggest that a verbal commitment without the word ‘promise’ can be an effective method to reduce young children's cheating behavior.     

‘What I Want and What You Want’: Children's Thinking about Competing Personal Preferences

This study examined how children reason about competing personal preferences. Seventy‐two participants (mean ages 5 years 5 months, 10 years 4 months, and 17 years 7 months) considered three hypothetical scenarios in which a protagonist's personal preference was in conflict with her or his friend's personal preference. Scenarios varied in the relative weightiness of each character's desires. Whereas 5‐ and 10‐year‐olds prioritized the friend's preference across scenarios, 17‐year‐olds affirmed the character's prerogative to act according to her or his own preference except when the friend's preference was weightier. Nevertheless, regardless of age, participants generally reasoned about these situations in terms of autonomy and friendship rather than as moral obligations. The findings contribute to our understanding of how children of different ages work out the boundaries of the personal.     

浅析何心隐的"寡欲"说

何心隐在伦理领域提出寡欲说。何心隐的寡欲说提倡节制欲望,提倡个人欲望的满足要受社会规范的制约,表现出与传统儒学思想的相通之处,但更多地体现出与传统寡欲说的区别。何心隐的寡欲说,其理论主旨在于坚决反对无欲,通过对欲的内涵的新解,何心隐明确了欲的正当性和天然合理性,提倡育欲即满足全体社会成员尤其是普通民众的各种欲求,反对统治者对社会财富的垄断,表达出新兴市民阶层对物质利益和平等地位的渴求,反映了当时先进知识分子对旧的社会秩序和传统道德的反思。     

The Components of Young Children's Emotion Knowledge: Which Are Enhanced by Adult Emotion Talk?

This research adopted observational and experimental paradigms to investigate the relationships between components of emotion knowledge in three‐ to four‐year‐old children. In Study 1, 88 children were assessed on the Emotion Matching Task (Morgan, Izard, & King), and two tasks requiring the generation of emotion labels and causes. Most tasks were significantly associated with age and language ability, and similar tasks were significantly but moderately correlated. In Study 2, 58 of these children were allocated to one of three conditions: emotion cause talk, in which they received four sessions of training focusing on emotion labels and causes; non‐emotion cause talk, focusing on causal relationships in general; or were allocated to a no‐training control. Children in the emotion causes condition showed improvement in their use of emotion labels but not other components of emotion knowledge. The findings suggest that, in three‐ to four‐year‐old children, emotion knowledge is constituted by related but separable components and that training in emotion language targets separate rather than all aspects of emotion knowledge.     

Do young children preferentially trust gossip or firsthand observation in choosing a collaborative partner?

From early on in ontogeny, young children hear things being said about particular individuals. Here we investigate the ways in which testimony with social content, that is, gossip, influences children's decision‐making. We explored whether five‐year‐old (N = 72) and seven‐year‐old (N = 72) children trust gossip or firsthand observation in a partner choice setting. Seven‐year‐old children preferentially trusted what they had seen firsthand over gossip; five‐year‐old children, in contrast, did not differentiate between these two sources of information. However, five‐year‐old children (but not seven‐year‐olds) generally gave negative information more weight, that is, they showed a “negativity bias.” These results suggest that at around school age, young children become more “epistemically vigilant” about gossip.     

Educational success for children in public care: advice from a group of high achievers

ABSTRACT Research over the past 20 years has consistently shown that children in public care fall behind at school, seldom achieve good qualifications, and are much less likely than their peers to go on to further or higher education. However, a small minority of looked‐after children do well academically. This paper examines the opinions of 38 high‐achieving young people who spent at least a year in residential or foster care on what they think are the best ways to enhance the educational experience of looked‐after children. An evaluation of four key questions from a semistructured interview highlighted the importance of foster carers, residential workers, social workers and teachers in providing support and encouragement for academic achievement. On the other hand, many of these individuals emphasized their dislike of being ‘singled out’ by the teacher. A third of the participants believed that negative stereotypes and low expectations of children in care among professionals and care providers were major obstacles to their educational success. Over half the sample reported that in many children’s homes basic necessities such as books, a desk and a quiet place to do homework were lacking. In addition their opportunity to engage in outside interests and hobbies was severely limited. By contrast, for these individuals foster care had provided better opportunities. On entering higher education the majority of the participants had faced severe problems. They stressed the need for continuing financial support and adequate year‐round accommodation, because, unlike most students, these care leavers usually have no parental home to return to during university vacations. A third of participants also felt a strong desire for a ‘guardian angel’ to support and encourage them during their time at university. The paper concludes that the views of these thoughtful and resilient individuals should be taken very seriously and translated into improvements in policy and practice. Official guidance now highlights the importance of education for looked‐after children, but changing attitudes and priorities at ground level presents a major challenge.     

Young Children's Persuasion in Everyday Conversation: Tactics and Attunement to Others' Mental States

Young children's persuasion tactics, and how these reflected attunement to others' mental states, were explored in archived longitudinal samples of transcribed at‐home conversations of four children, three to five years old. Over 87,000 utterances were examined to identify conversation ‘chunks’ involving persuasion; 1,307 chunks were then coded for who initiated the persuasion, the persuader's goal, tactics employed, the presence of cues about others' beliefs and desires, and whether children attended to such information. Analyses suggested that persuasion exchanges were initiated similarly by children and adults, were stable in frequency and length across time, and involved a limited set of persuasion tactics. Children's attempts to change beliefs increased although explicit mental‐state cues were only rarely available. When such cues were available, children more often than not altered their tactics. Implications for our understanding of children's developing social cognition and theory of mind, as well as the limitations of conversational analysis, are discussed.     

Children's Beliefs About Self‐disclosure to Friends Regarding Academic Achievement

Self‐disclosure to friends is a potentially useful way for children to pursue a range of desired goals. Here we examined reasoning about the appropriateness of disclosing one's own academic outcomes in a sample of 7‐, 9‐, 11‐, 13‐, and 15‐year‐old Chinese participants (N = 150). The valence of (1) the outcomes to be disclosed and (2) the corresponding outcomes for the potential audience for the disclosure was manipulated factorially, and participants judged whether disclosure was advisable and explained their responses. Disclosure was seen as more appropriate under valence‐matching conditions than valence‐mismatching conditions. How participants judged each type of disclosure under valence‐mismatching conditions varied as a function of participant age: As compared with younger participants, older participants considered disclosure of weak performance to a stronger performer more acceptable and disclosure of strong performance to a weaker performer less acceptable. These findings suggest that older children are more likely than younger children to appreciate that self‐disclosing positive performance outcomes can bring social costs, and that self‐disclosing negative performance outcomes can bring social benefits.     

Integration of Behavioral Frequency and Intention Information in Young Children's Trait Attributions

Two experiments examined three‐ to six‐year‐olds' use of frequency and intention information to make trait attributions and behavioral predictions. In experiment 1, participants were told a story about an actor who behaved positively once or four times on purpose or incidentally. Children were most likely to make trait‐consistent behavioral predictions after hearing about several positive, intentional behaviors. Trait attributions were largely positive. Experiment 2 examined children's use of the same cues concerning negative behavioral outcomes. Participants tended to predict that actors who engaged in negative behavior would do so again, irrespective of intention, although younger children required more exemplars than older children. Participants were most likely to make negative trait attributions after hearing about multiple intentional behaviors; however, there was reluctance with age to describe actors as mean. Implications for children's ‘theory of personality’ are discussed.     

When punishment is emotion‐driven: Children's,adolescents', and adults' costly punishment of unfair allocations

When do children, adolescents, and adults decide to punish fairness violations? Two studies with 9‐year‐old children, 13‐year‐old adolescents, and adults investigated whether the link between unfairness and punishment was mediated by negative emotional reactions (measured through galvanic skin responses and emotion ratings). Study 1 (N = 117) examined this question in the context of second‐party punishment, where the punisher is a direct victim of the violation. Study 2 (N = 119) assessed third‐party punishment, where the punisher is an observer, unaffected by the violation. In each study, participants were presented with seven distributions of points, which differed in how fairly the points were allocated between a proposer and receiver, and had to decide whether to punish these distributions. Although the unfairness of the distribution strongly influenced second‐ and third‐party punishment in all age groups, the mediating role of emotional appraisals (i.e., galvanic skin responses vs. emotion ratings) depended on whether or not the punisher was personally affected by the violation and age. Thus, negative emotions primarily motivate costly punishment when the punisher is affected by the violation or when an unaffected third‐party punisher takes the perspective of the victim of a violation, an ability that develops between childhood and adolescence.     

Bullying and the Need to Belong: Early Adolescents' Bullying-Related Behavior and the Acceptance they Desire and Receive from Particular Classmates

Based on the notion that one of the motives underlying children's antisocial behavior is their need to belong to particular peers, it was examined how each of four types of bullying‐related behavior would be related to the acceptance that 10 to 13‐year‐old children desired and received from same‐ and other‐sex children with different bullying‐related behavioral styles. Bullying‐related behavior was assessed using a peer nomination procedure. Children rated the importance of being accepted by each particular classmate and their own acceptance of these same classmates. Among boys, antisocial involvement in bullying was related to a desire to be accepted by other antisocial boys and to actually being rejected by boys in general. Among girls, antisocial involvement in bullying was related to a desire to be accepted by boys in general.     

Young Children's Affective Responses to Acceptance and Rejection From Peers: A Computer‐based Task Sensitive to Variation in Temperamental Shyness and Gender

This study presents a novel task examining young children's affective responses to evaluative feedback—specifically, social acceptance and rejection—from peers. We aimed to determine (1) whether young children report their affective responses to hypothetical peer evaluation predictably and consistently, and (2) whether young children's responses to peer evaluation vary as a function of temperamental shyness and gender. Four‐ to seven‐year‐old children (N = 48) sorted pictures of unknown, similar‐aged children into those with whom they wished or did not wish to play. Computerized peer evaluation later noted whether the pictured children were interested in a future playdate with participants. Participants then rated their affective responses to each acceptance or rejection event. Children were happy when accepted by children with whom they wanted to play, and disappointed when these children rejected them. Highly shy boys showed a wider range of responses to acceptance and rejection based on initial social interest, and may be particularly sensitive to both positive and negative evaluation. Overall, the playdate task captures individual differences in affective responses to evaluative peer feedback and is potentially amenable to future applications in research with young children, including pairings with psychophysiological measures.     

Simplifying Second‐order Belief Attribution: What Facilitates Children’s Performance on Measures of Conceptual Understanding?

This study investigated how 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children’s second‐order belief attribution might be facilitated by either reducing information processing or varying the sequence of task questions. In Experiment 1, compared with Perner and Wimmer’s (1985 ) original second‐order false‐belief task, a new task with reduced information‐processing demands promoted better second‐order reasoning. In Experiment 2, half the stories included a second‐order ignorance question before a second‐order belief question. The ignorance question promoted second‐order belief understanding, superseding the improvement induced by lowered processing demands. Together, the findings suggest that second‐order belief performance can be facilitated if children focus on the concept of ignorance during the sequence of questioning.     

Simplifying Second‐order Belief Attribution: What Facilitates Children’s Performance on Measures of Conceptual Understanding?

This study investigated how 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children’s second‐order belief attribution might be facilitated by either reducing information processing or varying the sequence of task questions. In Experiment 1, compared with Perner and Wimmer’s (1985 ) original second‐order false‐belief task, a new task with reduced information‐processing demands promoted better second‐order reasoning. In Experiment 2, half the stories included a second‐order ignorance question before a second‐order belief question. The ignorance question promoted second‐order belief understanding, superseding the improvement induced by lowered processing demands. Together, the findings suggest that second‐order belief performance can be facilitated if children focus on the concept of ignorance during the sequence of questioning.