Human adults incline toward moral objectivism but may approach things more relativistically if different cultures are involved. In this study, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children (N = 136) witnessed two parties who disagreed about moral matters: a normative judge (e.g., judging that it is wrong to do X) and an antinormative judge (e.g., judging that it is okay to do X). We assessed children’s metaethical judgment, that is, whether they judged that only one party (objectivism) or both parties (relativism) could (...) be right. We found that 9-year-olds, but not younger children, were more likely to judge that both parties could be right when a normative ingroup judge disagreed with an antinormative extraterrestrial judge (with different preferences and background) than when the antinormative judge was another ingroup individual. This effect was not found in a comparison case where parties disagreed about the possibility of different physical laws. These findings suggest that although young children often exhibit moral objectivism, by early school age they begin to temper their objectivism with culturally relative metaethical judgments. (shrink)

The idea of treating robots as free agents seems only to have existed in the realm of science fiction. In our current world, however, children are interacting with robotic technologies that look, talk, and act like agents. Are children willing to treat such technologies as agents with thoughts, feelings, experiences, and even free will? In this paper, we explore whether children’s developing concepts of agency and free will apply to robots. We first review the literature on children’s agency and free-will (...) beliefs, particularly looking at their beliefs about volition, responding to constraints, and deliberation about different options for action. We then review an emerging body of research that investigates children’s beliefs about agency and free will in robots. We end by discussing the implications for developing beliefs about agency and free will in an increasingly technological world. (shrink)

Generic statements express generalizations about categories and present a unique semantic profile that is distinct from quantified statements. This paper reports two studies examining the development of children's intuitions about the semantics of generics and how they differ from statements quantified by all, most, and some. Results reveal that, like adults, preschoolers recognize that generics have flexible truth conditions and are capable of representing a wide range of prevalence levels; and interpret novel generics as having near-universal prevalence implications. (...) Results further show that by age 4, children are beginning to differentiate the meaning of generics and quantified statements; however, even 7- to 11-year-olds are not adultlike in their intuitions about the meaning of most-quantified statements. Overall, these studies suggest that by preschool, children interpret generics in much the same way that adults do; however, mastery of the semantics of quantified statements follows a more protracted course. (shrink)

The contributors to this collection employ the analytic resources of cultural-historical theory to examine the relationship between childhood and children's development under different societal conditions. In particular they attend to relationships between development, emotions, motives and identities, and the social practices in which children and young people may be learners. These practices are knowledge-laden, imbued with cultural values and emotionally freighted by those who already act in them. The book first discusses the organising principles that underpin a (...) cultural-historical understanding of motives, development and learning. The second section foregrounds children's lives to exemplify the implications of these ideas as they are played out - examining how children are positioned as learners in pre-school, primary school and play environments. The final section uses the core ideas to look at the implementation of policy aimed at enhancing children's engagement with opportunities for learning, by discussing motives in the organisations that shape children's development. (shrink)

Friendships have important influences on children's well-being and future adjustment, and interpersonal forgiveness has been suggested as a crucial means for children to maintain friendships. However, existing measures of preadolescent children's forgiveness are restricted by developmental limitations to reporting emotional responses via questionnaire and inconsistent interpretations of the term “forgive.” This paper describes development and testing of concurrent and discriminant validity of a pictorial measure of children's emotional forgiveness, the Children's Forgiveness Card Set. In Study (...) 1, 148 Australian children aged 8–13 years responded to a hypothetical transgression in which apology was manipulated and completed the CFCS and extant measures of forgiveness and socially desirable responding. Following an exploratory factor analysis to clarify the structure of the CFCS, the CFCS correlated moderately with other forgiveness measures and did not correlate with socially desirable responding. Apology predicted CFCS responding among older children. In Study 2 an exploratory factor analysis broadly replicated the structure of the CFCS among a sample of N = 198 North American children aged 5–14 years. We also fitted an exploratory bi-factor model to the Study 2 data which clarified which cards best measured general forgiveness, or positive or hostile aspects of responding to transgressions. Apology once again predicted the CFCS, this time regardless of age. The CFCS appears a potentially valid measure of children's emotional forgiveness. Potential applications and differences between explicit and latent forgiveness in children are discussed. (shrink)

Aurora P. Jackson and Richard Scheines. Single Mother's Efficacy, Parenting in the Home Environment, and Children's Development in a Two-Wave Study.

This article focuses on the early years of children from immigrant families in Germany. Research has documented disparities in young children’s development correlating with their family background, making clear the importance of early intervention. Institutional childcare—as an early intervention for children at risk—plays an important role in Germany, as 34.3% of children below the age of three and 93% of children above that age are in external childcare. This paper focuses on the extent to which children from families with (...) a background of migration differ in their social development when considering their age of entry into early external childcare. Data from the infant cohort study of the German National Educational Panel Study is used to analyze the impact of early institutional childcare before the age of 3 years on children’s social competence at the age of 5 years, controlling for gender, siblings, temperament, home learning activities, and socioeconomic status. Results show the effects of duration of early external childcare on peer problems for children from families with a background of migration, in such a way that children who attend early external childcare for more than 1 year before the age of three show less problem behavior with peers than those who attend for less than a year. These findings have equity implications for children with a migration background living in Germany, especially as the proportion of these children is trending upwards. (shrink)

Drawing together researchers from diverse theoretical positions, the aim of this book is to work towards a coherent and unified account of how we develop an understanding of one's and others' mental states.

In this book, which distills a lifetime of study, Foulkes shows that dreaming as we normally understand it--active stories in which the dreamer is an actor-...

Recent studies in neuroeducation highlight the benefits of teaching children about how the brain works. However, very little is known about children's naive conceptions about the brain. The current study examined these representations, by asking 6–10 year-old children and adults to draw a brain and the inside of a belly as a control drawing. The drawings were scored using a content analysis and a list of graphic indicators was derived. First, all the graphic indicators used in the brain drawings (...) were different from those used in the belly drawings, suggesting that children are able to distinguish these two organs. Second, with age, children depict an increasing number of indicators, more complex indicators, indicators that are more anatomically correct, to depict the brain. There is an important evolution between 6 and 8 years-old but also between 10 years-old and adults. These results are discussed in relation to children's metacognitive knowledge and to their implications for neuroeducation. (shrink)

Carpendale & Lewis's theoretical reconstruction of the “theory of mind” problem offers new hope but still has far to go. The study of atypical development may provide some useful insights for dealing with the work ahead. In particular I discuss three issues – the boundary problem, the question of end states, and the issue of the centrality of triadic interaction.

Contributing to current debates about child welfare and child protection, this book provides a holistic view of how children develop agency, combining social, ...

Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development has brought wide attention to the role of adults in children’s learning and development. The author proposes that beyond understanding its mechanism, its use is influenced by various factors which the adult needs to be sensitive to. Through integrating related literature on the zpd and on adult-child interactions, this paper aims to shed light on the nature of adult sensitivity in actualizing the zpd. The concept is first analyzed theoretically. Two (...) types of sensitivity will then be discussed: adults’ self-awareness and their awareness of children as active players in the interaction process. Sigel’s concept of distancing is suggested as a means of enhancing one’s sensitivity. (shrink)

Missing from Quartz & Sejnowski's (Q&S's) unique and valuable effort to relate cognitive development to neural constructivism is an examination of the global emergent properties of adding new neural circuits. Such emergent properties can be studied with computational models. Modeling with generative connectionist networks shows that synaptogenic mechanisms can account for progressive increases in children's representational power.

Call generalism about children’s and adults’ wellbeing the thesis that the same theory of wellbeing applies to both children and adults. Our goal is to examine whether generalism is true. While this question has not received much attention in the past, it has recently been suggested that generalism is likely to be false and that we need to elaborate different theories of children’s and adults’ wellbeing. In this paper, we defend generalism against the main objections it faces and make a (...) positive case for it. (shrink)

Two studies examined children’s developing understanding of Aesop’s fables in relation to reading comprehension and to theory of mind. Study 1 included 172 children from Junior Kindergarten through Grade 6 in a school-wide examination of the relation between reading comprehension skills and understanding of Aesop’s fables told orally. Study 2 examined the relation between theory of mind and fables understanding among 186 Junior (4-year-old) and Senior (5-year-old) Kindergarten children. Study 1 results showed a developmental progression in fables understanding with children’s (...) responses becoming increasingly decontextualized as they were able to extract the life lesson. After general vocabulary, passage comprehension predicted fables understanding. Study 2 results showed a relation between young children’s theory of mind development and their understanding of fables. After general vocabulary, second-order theory of mind predicted children’s fables understanding. Findings point to the importance of developing mental state awareness in children’s ability to judge characters’ intentions and to understand the deeper message embedded in fables. (shrink)

We often think about the alternatives to a decision that has been made. Thinking in this way is known as counterfactual thinking, that is, thinking about what could have been had an alternative dec...

Since the mid-1980s many schools in predominantly white areas have taken active steps to counter racism and ethnocentrism and raise awareness of Britain's ethnic diversity through curriculum development. This paper is primarily concerned with the ethical issues raised by research into such initiatives at primary school level. We begin by alluding very briefly to the shortcomings of extant research into children's prejudice, noting that some studies can be criticised for the unwitting reinforcement of stereotypes. We move on to (...) examine the ethical and methodological considerations which have underpinned our own work in this area, focusing on a recent investigation into children's understanding of Jewish culture and identity. The techniques employed to probe the children's beliefs and attitudes and challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions are described at length, together with the ethical dilemmas addressed during the course of the research. In the second part of the paper, we focus on issues raised by our own curriculum development work in anti-racist and multicultural education in 'all white' schools. We draw extensively on a recent case-study of 10 and 11 year-olds' responses to a teaching programme which aimed to counter stereotypical images both of developing countries and Islam. (shrink)

Previous studies have found that narrative input conveyed through different media influences the structure and content of children’s narrative retellings. Visual, televised narratives appear to elicit richer and more detailed narratives than traditional, orally transmitted storybook media. To extend this prior work and drawing from research on narrative elaboration, the current study’s main goal was to identify the core plot component differences (the who, what, where, when, why, and how of a story) between children’s retellings of televised versus traditional storybook (...) narratives. However, because children also differ individually in their IQ, we further incorporated this variable into our analysis of children’s narrative retellings. For our purpose, a novel coding schema was developed, following and extending the existing narrative elaboration approaches. Participants were 46 typically developing children aged 4–5 years from Germany. The current study incorporated two narrative input conditions to which children were randomly assigned: in the video condition, children watched a non-verbal, visually conveyed, televised story from a DVD; and in the book condition, children read the story with an adult and experienced an orally conveyed version in the form of a book with minimal accompanying pictures. In both conditions, the same story was conveyed. After including IQ as a covariate in our analyses, results show that the children from the video condition gave significantly more elaborated retellings, particularly across the who, what, and where (sub-)components. Differences between the conditions in the component when, how and why did not reach statistical significance. Our findings indicate that different media types entail differential cognitive processing demands of a story, resulting in type-specific memories and narratives. The effect of different medial conditions was significant and persisted when individual differences in cognitive development were considered. Consequences for children’s development, education, and interaction with and within today’s digital world are discussed. (shrink)

Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative (...) interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991; 1999). It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction. Key Words: language; Piaget; social interaction; theories of mind; Vygotsky; Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of a research done to investigate the effectiveness of Philosophy for Children, a pedagogy employing philosophical dialogue in a community of inquiry, in a Philippine primary school. Quantitative analysis of critical thinking skills identified by Sharp and Splitter as reasoning; concept analysis; and meaning-making revealed that there was a considerable increase in the frequency of the children’s use of such critical thinking skills over the course of fifteen sessions of dialogical inquiry. Moreover, qualitative analysis of (...) excerpts from the dialogue transcripts accounted for the refinement of the children’s use of the critical thinking skills. This pioneering work thus calls for further research that will implement P4C in other grade levels and to explore other indicators of development in children’s thinking. Further, it recommends that primary schools adopt P4C in Philippine basic education curriculum and that teacher education institutions provide teacher training and include P4C for pre-service training. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector,” a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine's activation that (...) required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4-year-olds were found. We suggest that children's causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base rate of certain events occurring. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore how children learn to form new relationships with nature. It draws on a longitudinal case study of children participating in a stewardship project involving the conservation of salamanders during the school day in Stockholm, Sweden. The qualitative method includes two waves of data collection: when a group of 10-year-old children participated in the project (2015) and two years after they participated (2017). We conducted 49 interviews with children as well as using participant (...) observations and questionnaires. We found indications that children developed sympathy for salamanders and increased concern and care for nature, and that such relationships persisted two years after participation. Our rich qualitative data suggest that whole situations of sufficient unpredictability triggering free exploration of the area, direct sensory contact and significant experiences of interacting with a species were important for children’s development of affective relationships with the salamander species and with nature in an open-ended sense. Saving the lives of trapped animals enabled direct sensory interaction, feedback, increased understanding, and development of new skills for dynamically exploring further ways of saving species in an interactive process experienced as deeply meaningful, enjoyable and connecting. The behavioural setting instilled a sense of pride and commitment, and the high degree of responsibility given to the children while exploring the habitat during authentic situations enriched children’s enjoyment. The study has implications for the design of education programmes that aim to connect children with nature and for a child-sensitive urban policy that supports authentic nature situations in close spatial proximity to preschools and schools. (shrink)

This article explores children’s narrative identity formation and the impact of adult–child relationships on shaping a child’s narrative. The formation of identity in all children is vulnerable to a culture of ‘adultism’, wherein the authority wielded by adults can potentially subject children to abuse and neglect. Consequently, adultism has the aptitude to hinder the constructive development of a life-affirming identity in children. The primary objective of this article is to develop a childist narrative theology of praxis methodology, aimed at (...) raising consciousness and educating adults on both life-denying and life-giving ways of engaging in the process of children’s narrative identity formation.To achieve this goal, the methodology is developed by adapting Denise Ackermann’s ‘feminist theology of praxis’ to focus specifically on children. The application of feminist theory principles is deemed relevant to the social standing of children as it aligns with the broader goal of liberating oppressed groups, whether women or children. Additionally, John Wall’s work is employed to elucidate the terms ‘childist’ and ‘childism’ as interpretive frameworks. Positioned within the scientific domain of Practical Theology, this study seeks to transform conditions that impede human flourishing into opportunities for positive change.The research objectives determine that a literature review will be suitable to gather essential information for the formulation of a childist narrative theology of praxis. This review, characterised as explorative and descriptive, is conducted within the field of Practical Theology.Contribution: The significance of this study is underscored by its exploration and description of the pastoral functions of consciousness, awareness-raising, and education concerning adult–child relations. By scrutinising these pastoral functions, the emphasis is placed on the proactive, preventive, and universal aspects of pastoral care in the context of children, thereby contributing valuable insights to the discourse. (shrink)

We can understand and act upon the beliefs of other people, even when these conflict with our own beliefs. Children’s development of this ability, known as Theory of Mind, typically happens around age 4. Research using a looking-time paradigm, however, established that toddlers at the age of 15 months old pass a non-verbal false-belief task (Onishi and Baillargeon in Science 308:255–258, 2005). This is well before the age at which children pass any of the verbal false-belief tasks. In this (...) study we present a more complex case of false-belief reasoning with older children. We tested second-order reasoning, probing children’s ability to handle the belief of one person about the belief of another person. We find just the opposite: 7-year-olds pass a verbal false-belief reasoning task, but fail on an equally complex low-verbal task. This finding suggests that language supports explicit reasoning about beliefs, perhaps by facilitating the cognitive system to keep track of beliefs attributed by people to other people. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to explore whether children, who have been exposed to the concept of the soul, differentiate the soul from the mind. In the first experiment, 4- to 12-year-old children were asked about whether a religious ritual affects the mind, the brain, or the soul. The majority of the children claimed that only the soul was different after baptism. In a follow-up study, 6- to 12-year-old children were tested more explicitly on what factors differentiate the soul from the (...) mind and the brain. Children differentiated the soul from the mind and the brain along two dimensions: function and stability. In contrast to their responses about the mind and the brain, children did not claim that the soul was important for cognitive, non-cognitive, or biological functioning. Children consistently indicated that the mind and the brain change and grow over time. In contrast, children indicated that the soul is something that stays constant and is devoted to various, predominantly spiritual, functions. (shrink)

When faced with transgressions in their peer groups, children must navigate a series of situational cues (e.g., type of transgression, transgressor gender, transgressor intentionality) to evaluate the moral status of transgressions and to inform their subsequent behavior toward the transgressors. There is little research on which cues children prioritize when presented together, how reliance on these cues may be affected by certain biases (e.g., gender norms), or how the prioritization of these cues may change with age. To explore these questions, (...) 138 5- to 7-year-olds (younger children) and 8- to 10-year-olds (older children) evaluated a series of boy and girl characters who partook in physical or relational aggression with ambiguous or purposeful intent. Children were asked to provide sociomoral evaluations (i.e., acceptability, punishment, and intention attribution judgments) and social preferences. Transgressor gender only impacted children’s social preferences. Conversely, aggression form and transgressor intent shifted children’s sociomoral judgments: they were harsher toward physical transgressors with purposeful intent over those with ambiguous intent but made similar evaluations for relational transgressors regardless of intentionality. The present results suggest that gender is perhaps not uniformly relevant to children across all contexts, as other cues were prioritized for children’s sociomoral judgments. Since children likely have less familiarity with relational aggression compared to physical aggression, it follows that intent would only shift judgments about physical transgressors. This research provides insight about how children simultaneously navigate multiple cues in aggression contexts, which is likely reflective of their real-world experiences. (shrink)

In this study we use a computational model of language learning called model of syntax acquisition in children (MOSAIC) to investigate the extent to which the optional infinitive (OI) phenomenon in Dutch and English can be explained in terms of a resource-limited distributional analysis of Dutch and English child-directed speech. The results show that the same version of MOSAIC is able to simulate changes in the pattern of finiteness marking in 2 children learning Dutch and 2 children learning English as (...) the average length of their utterances increases. These results suggest that it is possible to explain the key features of the OI phenomenon in both Dutch and English in terms of the interaction between an utterance-final bias in learning and the distributional characteristics of child-directed speech in the 2 languages. They also show how computational modeling techniques can be used to investigate the extent to which cross-linguistic similarities in the developmental data can be explained in terms of common processing constraints as opposed to innate knowledge of universal grammar. (shrink)