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Social comparison can elicit emotions such as envy, which can affect social interactions. The emergence and development of such social emotions through ontogeny, and their influence on social interaction, are unknown. We tested 182 children from 7 to 13 years of age with a novel monetary reward-and-punishment task measuring envy and Schadenfreude (i.e., gloating or taking delight in someone else's misfortune). Children were either rewarded or punished in a trial-by-trial evaluation of their performance on a speeded reaction time task. In a social condition, feedback of their own and a competitor's performance was given for each trial. Afterward, children rated how they felt about the outcome. The ratings suggest that when children won, they felt better if the competitor lost instead of winning (i.e., Schadenfreude). Conversely, when children lost, they felt worse if the competitor won instead of losing (i.e., envy). Crucially, levels of envy and Schadenfreude decreased with age. We also studied how these emotions relate to social decisions made separately during three resource allocation paradigms. In each, children chose between two options that differed in the distribution of valuable tokens between themselves and an anonymous other. The combination of choices allowed the measurement of inequity aversion (i.e., equality for all) and spite (i.e., self-profit to maximal disadvantage of the other). We found an age-related increase in inequity aversion and decrease in spite. Crucially, age-related changes in both envy and Schadenfreude predicted the developmental change in equity-related decisions. These findings shed light on the development of social emotions and demonstrate their importance in the development of prosocial behavior in children. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

Engaging in prosocial behaviors (acts that benefit others) is associated with many positive outcomes in children, including the development of positive peer relationships, academic achievement, and good psychological functioning. This study examined the social learning mechanisms toddlers use to acquire prosocial behaviors. This brief report presents a new experimental procedure in which 2-year-olds (28-32 months, N=30) saw a video of an adult performing a novel prosocial behavior in response to another person's distress. Children then had the opportunity to imitate and implement the behavior in response to their own parent's physical distress. Children who saw the video were more likely to perform the novel action and to display non-demonstrated prosocial behaviors relative to (a) children who did not view the video but saw a parent in distress and (b) children who saw the video but witnessed their mother engage in a neutral activity. These results suggest that toddlers imitate and emulate prosocial behaviors for social interaction and that children can apply such behaviors in appropriate situations. (Contains 2 figures.)

The expectations children bring to interactions, as well as the information they receive prior to them, may be important for children's experiences of new adults. In this study, 148 children (8-13 years old) reported on their expectations of adults, received one of three types of information about a new adult (positive, realistic, or control), and then "interacted" with a videotaped "controlling" adult. The effect of information type depended on children's age and prior expectations, with expectancy effects emerging in the context of positive information at the younger end of our age range and in the context of realistic information at the older end of our age range. Furthermore, the more expectations exceeded perceptions (i.e., the more disappointment), the lower children's rapport, affect, and prosocial intentions were and the more internal causal attributions they made. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and applied contributions. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Is prosocial behavior a prerequisite for having good-quality friendships? This study (N=477, mean age=12.2 years) examined whether the link between children's prosocial tendencies and their perceived friendship quality was dependent on children's level of popularity in the peer group. Children's prosocial tendencies were assessed both as observed behavior in a standardized setting and as a self-reported predisposition to act in prosocial ways. Across measures, the results showed that prosocial tendencies are associated with higher perceived friendship quality among nonpopular children (i.e., children holding average or lower levels of popularity), but not among popular children. Thus, even if they lack prosocial qualities, popular children are still able to hold good-quality friendships. Popular children may have other compensating characteristics, such as popularity by association, that make them attractive for peers to be friends with. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Children tell prosocial lies for self- and other-oriented reasons. However, it is unclear how motivational and socialization factors affect their lying. Furthermore, it is unclear whether children's moral understanding and evaluations of prosocial lie scenarios (including perceptions of vignette characters' feelings) predict their actual prosocial behaviors. These were explored in two studies. In Study 1, 72 children (36 second graders and 36 fourth graders) participated in a disappointing gift paradigm in either a high-cost condition (lost a good gift for a disappointing one) or a low-cost condition (received a disappointing gift). More children lied in the low-cost condition (94%) than in the high-cost condition (72%), with no age difference. In Study 2, 117 children (42 preschoolers, 41 early elementary school age, and 34 late elementary school age) participated in either a high- or low-cost disappointing gift paradigm and responded to prosocial vignette scenarios. Parents reported on their parenting practices and family emotional expressivity. Again, more children lied in the low-cost condition (68%) than in the high-cost condition (40%); however, there was an age effect among children in the high-cost condition. Preschoolers were less likely than older children to lie when there was a high personal cost. In addition, compared with truth-tellers, prosocial liars had parents who were more authoritative but expressed less positive emotion within the family. Finally, there was an interaction between children's prosocial lie-telling behavior and their evaluations of the protagonist's and recipient's feelings. Findings contribute to understanding the trajectory of children's prosocial lie-telling, their reasons for telling such lies, and their knowledge about interpersonal communication. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

This study investigated the impact of emotion expectancies on adolescents' moral decision making in hypothetical situations. The sample consisted of 160 participants from three different grade levels (mean age=15.79 years, SD=2.96). Participants were confronted with a set of scenarios that described various emotional outcomes of (im)moral actions and needed to decide what they would do if they were in the protagonist's shoes. Findings demonstrate that emotion expectancies differentially influenced adolescents' hypothetical decision making in antisocial versus prosocial behavioral contexts. Whereas negatively charged self-evaluative emotions over failing to act morally (e.g., guilt) were the strongest predictor for moral choice in antisocial behavioral contexts, positively charged self-evaluative emotions over acting morally (e.g., pride) most strongly predicted moral choice in prosocial contexts. Older adolescents paid greater attention to outcome-oriented emotions that make the decision to act morally less attractive (e.g., regret). Overall, the study suggests that emotion expectancies influence moral decision making in unique and meaningful ways. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Individuals often feel more empathy toward members of their own social groups than toward members of other social groups. However, individual factors contributing to this empathy bias remain largely unexplored among children. This study examined intergroup empathic processing among 94 children (mean age = 8.74 years, SD = 1.76) assigned to novel color groups. After 1 week in their group, children were interviewed to assess their ingroup identification and trait levels of social anxiety. Subsequently, a social threat was simulated, and children's feelings of situational distress and empathy bias for others who experienced the same threat were assessed. Findings indicated that, among children who reported more social anxiety and situational distress, those with a stronger ingroup identity displayed more empathy bias favoring their ingroup. Given that empathy is an important contributor to prosocial behavior, implications for children's intergroup relations are discussed. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

Trustworthiness was examined in children and early adolescents from two countries. In Study 1,505 children in the fifth and sixth school years in the United Kingdom (mean age = 9 years 7 months) were tested across an 8-month period. In Study 2,350 sixth- through eighth-grade Canadian children and early adolescents (mean age = 12 years 11 months) were tested across a 1-year period. Participants completed measures assessing trustworthiness (ratings of promise and secret keeping by peer group and also by best friend in Study 1), assertiveness (Study 1), prosocial behavior (Study 2), social relationships (friendships and peer preference), and psychological adjustment (self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and loneliness). Peer-reported trustworthiness was positively associated with, and predicted changes across time in, the number of friendships. The observed relations were found to be statistically independent of peer preference and peer-reported assertiveness or prosocial behavior. Trustworthiness was found to be positively associated with peer preference (Study 1 and Study 2) and psychological adjustment (Study 1).

Examines the contribution of two variables, directiveness of instructions and presence of a socializing agent, upon the production and persistence of modeled donating. Subjects were 112 second and third graders. (MP)

Third and fourth grade children were instructed to share half their winnings from a bowling game under one of three types of verbal appeal: a power assertive appeal emphasizing punishment for noncompliance, an inductive appeal emphasizing contributions to the other's well-being, or a neutral appeal. (Author/DB)

• First longitudinal investigation of instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing. • Consistent with prior work, preschoolers' prosocial behaviors increased with age across task types. • Developmental trajectories of the three types of prosocial behaviors differed not only between but also within prosocial types. • Instrumental helping at age 3 predicted comforting (sadness trial) at age 4. • Comforting (sadness trial) at age 3 predicted sharing (costly sadness trial) at age 4. The current research provides a detailed longitudinal examination of instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing in early childhood. Preschoolers completed a series of prosocial behavior tasks when they were 2 years old (n = 200), 3 years old (n = 161), and 4 years old (n = 135). As expected, children's prosocial behaviors increased with age across all tasks. Yet children's prosocial behaviors were more nuanced than expected, with significant differences in scores between trials within each type of prosocial behavior. Cross-lagged panel modelling revealed that instrumental helping at 3 years predicted comforting when an experimenter was sad or cold at 4 years. Furthermore, children's comforting of a sad experimenter at 3 years predicted sharing their own toy with a sad experimenter at 4 years. These findings offer novel insights into the developmental trajectory of three types of prosocial behavior in early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does a sense of having less or more than what one needs affect one's generosity? The question of how resource access influences prosocial behavior has received much attention in studies with adults but has produced conflicting findings. To better understand this relationship, we tested whether resource access affects generosity in the developing mind. In our preregistered investigation, we used a narrative recall method to explore how temporary, experimentally evoked states of resource abundance or scarcity affect children's sharing. In this study, 6- to 8-year-old American children (N = 148) recalled an experience of scarcity or abundance and then chose how many prizes to share with another child. We found that children in the scarce condition rated themselves as sadder, viewed their resource access as more limited, and shared fewer tokens than children in the abundant condition. Our results indicate that recalling past experiences of resource access creates distinct behavioral consequences for children and suggest that a sense of "having less" may encourage a strategy of resource conservation relative to a sense of "having more," even at a young age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forgiveness plays an important role in restoring and maintaining cooperative relationships. Previous studies have demonstrated that young children could forgive transgressors both as a third party and as a victim. However, the research on young children's understanding of forgiveness is scant. This study focused on the two main functions of forgiveness-the restoration of a damaged relationship between the victim and the transgressor and the positive emotional change in the victim toward the transgressor. In this study, 48 4-year-olds (25 girls), 50 5-year-olds (21 girls), and 50 6-year-olds (21 girls) in Japan heard stories in which a victim either did or did not forgive a transgressor. They answered questions about the relationship between the victim and the transgressor and the victim's feelings toward the transgressor. Regarding the restoration of a damaged relationship, 4- to 6-year-olds understood that the restoration could occur in the presence of forgiveness. Yet, 6-year-olds showed more distinctive belief than 4- and 5-year-olds that the damaged relationship remains unrestored without forgiveness from the victim. For emotional changes, 6-year-olds understood that the forgiving victim would experience positive emotional changes, whereas the unforgiving victim would not. However, 4- and 5-year-olds expected positive emotional changes even without forgiveness, although they anticipated greater changes after forgiveness. The results show that the understanding of the important functions of forgiveness is present at 4 years of age and matures by 6 years of age. Children may develop a sophisticated understanding of the functions of forgiveness later than the actual forgiving behavior., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

• Children think kindness is about helping others; adults think kindness is also about paying a cost to help others. • Acts that help others in need were viewed as the kindest. • Children and teens say they are kinder than adults think they are. What do children think makes an act kind? Which kind acts are children likely to perform? Previous research with adults suggests that the kindness of acts depends largely on the benefit provided and to a lesser extent on the cost incurred, and that adults are more likely to perform low-cost, high-benefit kind acts. In the current study, children (9–12 years, n = 945) and teens (13–17 years, n = 939) rated the benefit, cost, kindness, and likelihood of performing 173 acts of kindness, and adults (18+ years, n = 891) rated how beneficial, costly, kind, and likely the acts would be for young people to perform. Among children and teens, benefit but not cost predicted the kindness of acts, and benefit positively predicted, but cost negatively predicted, performance (for "kindness quotients" of 61% and 65%, respectively). Among adults, benefit and cost predicted the kindness of acts, and cost, but not benefit, negatively predicted performance (for a kindness quotient of 59%). The results for children and teens are similar to those from previous research with adults; however, adults are more sensitive to cost when rating kindness, are less sensitive to benefit when rating performance by young people, and are less likely to think young people will perform acts of kindness overall. In practical terms, the results suggest that recommending cost-effective acts may be the best way to encourage children to be kinder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Preschool children were either exposed to a high- or low-distressed adult or child. • Empathic concern and prosocial behaviors were used as early expressions of compassion. • Children's competence for empathic concern increased with age. • Children with more advanced Theory-of-Mind abilities showed greater empathic concern and prosocial behavior. • Securely attached children showed more empathic concern than insecure children. This study focused on attachment representations and theory of mind as potential developmental origins of individual differences in preschoolers' peer- and adult-directed empathic concern and prosocial behavior. In two experiments, 3- to 6-year-olds were exposed to either a high-distressed or low-distressed adult or child using a laboratory setting (Experiment 1; N = 263) or hypothetical vignettes (Experiment 2; N = 202). Self-reported and coded expressions of empathic concern and prosocial behaviors were used as early indicators of compassion. The findings indicated that children expressed more empathic concern and engaged in more prosocial behavior in the high-distress condition than in the low-distress condition. Children's empathic concern and prosocial behavior increased with age. Secure attachment and theory of mind abilities played significant moderating roles in the association between distress conditions and empathic concern. Children with more advanced theory of mind abilities and secure attachment were better at recognizing the concerns of distressed peers or adults and showed significantly more empathic concern. Resistant and disorganized children exhibited more self-distress in response to others' distress. The implications for early interventions directed at increasing empathic concern and prosocial behavior are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Feedback about an excluded peers' sadness elicited prosocial behavior. • This effect was only evident among adolescents with histories of violence exposure. • Simply cueing such adolescents to others' emotions may facilitate prosocial behavior. Although exposure to violence has been consistently associated with deficits in prosocial behavior among adolescents, effective methods of mitigating these deficits have yet to be identified. The current investigation tested whether prosocial behavior could be promoted by providing adolescents with feedback about the emotional states of others and whether the effects of feedback varied between adolescents who had versus had not experienced violence in the home or in the community. Adolescents aged 8 to 17 years with (n = 87) and without (n = 61) histories of violence exposure completed a virtual social exclusion ball-tossing paradigm in which information about an excluded peer's emotions (sad, angry, or neutral) was experimentally manipulated. Among adolescents with histories of violence exposure, those who received feedback that the peer was sad due to being excluded compensated by throwing the ball more often to that peer. In contrast, adolescents without histories of violence exposure did not engage in compensatory prosocial behavior, instead maintaining a relatively even number of tosses to all players. Findings offer new insight into simple potential methods of eliciting prosocial behavior in adolescents for whom such responding may be compromised and may provide a potential starting point for interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A wide set of cognitive skills contribute to altruistic behavior in middle childhood. • Visual analysis and attention support altruistic intention in younger children. • Behavioral control supports altruistic behavior in younger children. • In the older children of our sample, higher cognitive skills predicted lower giving. • Bayesian analysis provides useful insight in cognitive development research. Altruistic behavior, which intentionally benefits a recipient without expectation of a reward or at a cost to the actor, is observed throughout the lifespan from everyday interactions to emergency situations. Empathy has long been considered a major driver of altruistic action, but the social information processing model supports the idea that other cognitive processes may also play a role in altruistic intention and behavior. Our aim was to investigate how visual analysis, attention, inhibitory control, and theory of mind capabilities uniquely contribute to predicting altruistic intention and behavior in a sample of 67 French children (35 girls and 32 boys; M age = 9.92 ± 0.99 years) from Paris and neighboring suburbs. Using a Bayesian analysis framework, we showed that in younger grade levels visual analysis and selective attention are strong predictors of altruistic intention and that inhibitory control strongly predicts altruistic behavior in a dictator game. Processes underlying theory of mind, however, negatively predict altruistic behavior in the youngest grade. In higher grade levels, we found that stronger attention and inhibitory control predicts lower altruistic intention and behavior. Empathy was not found to predict altruistic intention or behavior. These results suggest that different cognitive capabilities are involved in altruistic intention and behavior and that their contribution changes throughout middle childhood as social constraints deepen and altruism calls on more complex reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children imitate others to learn and reach social goals such as affiliation or prosociality. • Imitation can be measured via automatic imitation in adults. • Automatic imitation can be measured with an adult paradigm in school-aged children. • Children react faster in congruent than incongruent trials. • Children show lower error rates in congruent than incongruent trials. Children imitate others for different reasons: To learn from others and to reach social goals such as affiliation or prosociality. So far, imitative acts have been measured using diverging methods in children and adults. Here, we investigated whether school-aged children's imitation can be measured via their automatic imitation with a classical imitation-inhibition task (Brass et al., 2000) as has been used in adults. To this end, we measured automatic imitation in N = 94 7–8-year-olds and N = 10 adults. The results were similar in children and adults: Observing actions that are incongruent with participants' actions interferes with their responses resulting in increased reaction times and error rates. This shows that assessing automatic imitation via the imitation-inhibition task is feasible in children, and creates the basis for future studies to compare the behaviour of different age groups with the same imitation task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This study asked whether children are motivated to inform others of prosocial acts. • Children were asked to put away paper scraps and the framing differed by condition. • Children were more eager to make prosocial acts known than instrumental acts. • Children were also more eager to make a high-cost vs. low-cost act known. • Implications for children's reputation and impression management are discussed. We report two experiments on children's tendency to enhance their reputations through communicative acts. In the experiments, 4-year-olds (N = 120) had the opportunity to inform a social partner that they had helped him in his absence. In a first experiment, we pitted a prosocial act ("Let's help clean up for Doggie!") against an instrumental act ("Let's move these out of our way"). Children in the prosocial condition were quicker to inform their partner of the act and more likely to protest when another individual was given credit for it. In a second experiment, we replicated the prosocial condition but with a new manipulation: high-cost versus low-cost helping. We manipulated both the language surrounding cost (i.e., "This will be pretty tough to clean up" vs. "It will be really easy to clean this up") and how difficult the task itself was. As predicted, children in the high-cost condition were quicker to inform their partner of the act and more likely to take back credit for it. These results suggest that even 4-year-old children make active attempts to elicit positive reputational judgments for their prosocial acts, with cost as a moderating factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Explored imitation of causally opaque actions in two communities. • A typical WEIRD community and a remote indigenous community. • Pro/antisocial behavior did not impact imitation in either cultural group. • Indigenous children imitated at higher rates than WEIRD children. Extensive research has documented that the antisocial behavior of others influences children's perceptions of and behavior toward them. In general, children report liking antisocial agents less, allocate them fewer resources, and are less likely to help them. Despite this, no research to date has explored how antisocial behavior may influence another socially driven behavior—imitation. Moreover, no research has addressed this question cross-culturally. To explore this, children were shown groups behaving prosocially or antisocially and were subsequently given the chance to imitate causally opaque actions (employed to highlight their normative framework) performed by these groups. Children from two cultures in Australia were included in the sample: Brisbane, a medium to large metropolitan city, and Borroloola, a remote indigenous community. Results revealed no impact of prosocial or antisocial behavior on imitative actions in either culture. However, we did identify differences in imitation rates between communities. Specifically, children from Borroloola persisted with imitation at far higher rates than children from Brisbane, highlighting the need for further nuanced research to unpack cross-cultural differences in social learning proclivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • First longitudinal study of children's lying across different motivational contexts. • Children were fairly consistent in telling prosocial and antisocial lies over time. • Decisions to tell lies type may change developmentally across motivational contexts. • Findings advance understanding of the development of lying over time. Abstract The current study examined children's lie-telling behavior across four motivational contexts at two time points: Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2). There were 127 children (M T1 = 4.65 years old, SD = 0.66; M T2 = 6.93 years old, SD = 0.80) who participated twice in four experimental paradigms to examine antisocial and prosocial lie-telling behavior approximately 2 years apart. Children also completed cognitive measures, and parents completed questionnaires on parenting styles and their children's behavior. Results revealed that children's lie-telling was not uniform across motivational contexts within one time point but that children were fairly consistent in telling antisocial and prosocial lies over time. These findings advance our understanding of the development of lying and how children's decisions to lie may change over time and across motivational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Young children positively judge prosocial actors, despite recipients' prior behavior. • Helping, without having received help previously, is increasingly valued with age. • Most participants predicted they would help those who had refused to help. • As people age, they increasingly understand that others will offer help selectively. Abstract We examined age-related differences in evaluating reciprocal prosocial behavior (e.g., helping someone who has helped you) and unilateral prosocial behavior (e.g., helping someone who has previously refused your request for help). Participants were kindergarteners, second and fifth graders, and undergraduate students (N = 110). We examined the trait evaluations of reciprocal and unilateral prosocial protagonists, behavior predictions of the participants in reciprocal and unilateral situations, and behavior predictions of others (including reciprocal and unilateral protagonists and others known to the participants) in reciprocal and unilateral prosocial situations. Results revealed that most kindergarteners did not focus on whether help was reciprocal or unilateral, and there were no clear differences in trait evaluations or predicted reciprocal or unilateral prosocial behaviors. In contrast, older children and undergraduates tended to focus on the difference between reciprocal and unilateral help. They evaluated unilateral protagonists more positively than reciprocal protagonists, and they judged the likelihood that others would engage in unilateral prosocial behaviors as lower than the likelihood that they would engage in reciprocal behaviors. However, most participants, regardless of age, predicted that they themselves would act prosocially in both reciprocal and unilateral situations. We discuss how the current results have implications for research on age-related trends in evaluating reciprocity and morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The crying baby paradigm used in the home does reveal individual differences. • There are few gender differences in toddler responses to this empathy-eliciting paradigm. • Parent discourse around the paradigm is responsive to toddler behaviors. • Variation in empathic concern was partly explained by dyadic gender composition. Abstract The ability to display caring responses to another child's distress is a key aspect of early empathy that is facilitated by parental socialization. However, existing studies typically involve lab settings and focus on toddlers' unsupported responses to adult simulations of distress, raising questions about their ecological validity. Framed within the New Fathers and Mothers Study, the current study involved 156 British toddlers (M age = 24.35 months, SD = 0.73) who were filmed at home with either their mother or father (87 mothers and 69 fathers) in a novel paradigm involving a lifelike crying baby doll. Capitalizing on the inclusion of both fathers and mothers, a key question concerned effects of parent–toddler dyad gender composition on both global ratings of toddlers' displays of empathic concern and more specific indicators, including toddlers' attentional, emotional, and behavioral responses. Whereas parental responses did not differ by either child or parent gender and appeared to be closely attuned to child behavior, toddlers' responses showed effects of both (a) child gender, evident in higher rates of emotion labeling in girls than in boys (even when controlling for language ability), and (b) parent gender, evident in higher levels of empathic concern for girls observed with fathers than for those observed with mothers. These findings are discussed within the context of empathy development and parental socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Three- and 5-year-olds played a guessing game to win a prize. • They could win for someone else or for themselves. • Five-year-olds cheated more for others (a prosocial cheating effect). • The effect only occurred when children could signal that they were prosocial. • Prosocial justifications can promote cheating due to social evaluation concerns. Abstract The current research examined whether young children engage in unethical behavior to a greater extent when they have a prosocial justification for doing so. Participants (3- and 5-year-olds, N = 240) played a guessing game in which they were tempted to cheat to win a prize after promising not to do so. In Study 1, children were randomly assigned to either an experimental prosocial condition in which they were told that the prize would be given to a child who was unable to play the game or a control condition in which they were told that they would get to keep the prize for themselves. The 5-year-olds, but not the 3-year-olds, were more likely to cheat in the prosocial condition than in the control condition. Studies 2a and 2b revealed that older children's tendency to engage in prosocial cheating was driven by their concern with signaling to others that they are prosocial. These findings suggest that the tendency to act unethically to benefit others emerges early in development and that this tendency may reflect children's interest in prosocial signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children’s willingness to spontaneously help others is the subject of a large body of research investigating the ontogeny of moral behavior and thought. A developing debate centers around the extent to which social factors influence the desire to help. Familiarity with the person needing help is one such factor that varies across many studies but has not been systematically investigated. In Experiment 1, we show that toddlers were significantly more likely to assist a person on an out-of-reach clothespin task when they had previously become familiar with that person. Moreover, and in contrast to previous work, we found that becoming familiar with a person increases helpfulness only toward that person and does not transfer to an unknown person. We further demonstrate, in Experiment 2A, that children were equally likely to approach and take a sticker from an experimenter with whom they were familiar or unfamiliar—thereby ruling out wariness of strangers as the key driver for familiarity effects in Experiment 1. Moreover, in Experiment 2B, we show that children were more likely to help the previously unfamiliar partner (from Experiment 2A) after the partner gave the child the sticker. We conclude that familiarity is an ecologically important social influencer of toddler helping behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosocial and normative behavior emerges in early childhood, but substantial changes in prosocial behavior in middle childhood may be due to it becoming integrated with children’s understanding of what is normative. Here we show that information about what is normative begins influencing children’s costly sharing in middle childhood in a sample of 6- to 11-year-old German children. Information about what is normative was most influential when indicating what was “right” (i.e., “The right thing is to choose this”). It was less influential when indicating what was prescribed by a rule (i.e., “There is a rule that says to choose this”) or when it indicated what the majority of people do (i.e., “Most people choose this”). These findings support the idea that middle childhood is when social norms begin to shape children’s costly sharing and provide insight into the psychological foundations of the relationship between norms and prosocial behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specific emotions, especially guilt, are considered to facilitate children’s prosocial behavior. The current study differentiated moral stories with a helping theme in terms of the valence and source of emotions and aimed to clarify the effect of these stories on preschoolers’ helping intentions and behavior. A total of 322 preschoolers between 4 and 6 years old were randomly assigned to four experimental groups and one control group. A specific type of moral story was presented to each of the experimental groups, whereas a nonmoral story was presented to the control group. The preschoolers were also asked to answer relevant questions to examine their story comprehension. The preschoolers’ donating intentions and behavior were then measured. The results showed that all the experimental groups expressed more donating intentions than the control group. However, only the group that read the moral story emphasizing the actor’s negative emotions toward his nonhelping behavior displayed more donating behavior than the control group. Therefore, the current study reveals that various moral stories dealing with a helping theme can facilitate helping intentions among preschoolers and that only certain stories can promote their helping behavior. Thus, it indicates the specificity of moral stories that facilitate prosocial behavior in terms of the valence and source of emotions in those stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cooperative situations, individual interests can be in conflict with those of the group, creating a social dilemma in which one must choose whether to cooperate or not. Sensitivity to social stimuli is an important factor influencing cooperative behavior in such dilemmas. The current study investigated the influence of verbal feedback and vigilance by adults on children’s donating behavior in a public goods game. The participants were 739 public school children, between 5 and 12 years of age, who were divided into 34 groups. Each group was assigned to one of four experimental conditions: control, positive feedback (praise), negative feedback (criticism), or vigilance. Participants then played eight rounds of the game. The children’s donations were greater in the feedback and vigilance conditions, but the effects were mediated by age and rounds. The results are most likely related to concerns about reputation, which tend to become stronger with age. Older children are better at self-presentation and understanding social norms. Thus, compared with younger children, they seemed more concerned with appearing to be generous, but only when they could get credit for it. Nevertheless, children’s donations still decreased across the rounds. Although adult vigilance and feedback influence children’s cooperation among peers, other mechanisms are necessary to stabilize their behavior over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have revealed that preschoolers selectively allocate their resources based on their social relationship with recipients such as friendship. In this investigation, we investigated how expectations about recipients’ prosociality and the ability of future thinking relate to the selective allocation of resources. In Study 1, participants aged 3.5–6 years chose how to allocate resources from two ways (selfish allocation, where only the participants could receive stickers, and equal allocation, where the participants and recipients receive get the same number of stickers) in costly and non-costly situations with three recipients (friend, peer, and stranger). Participants were asked to state which alternatives the recipients would choose if they were given a choice. The results showed that children aged 5 and 6 years tended to choose equal allocation of resources when they expected the recipients to do the same both in costly and non-costly situations. This tendency was not observed in children aged 3.5 and 4 years. In Study 2, the relationships between selectivity in non-costly allocation and two facets of future thinking (delay of gratification and mental time travel) were investigated in children aged 5 and 6 years. The results suggested that children with a higher mental time travel ability tended to be more selective in allocating resources based on social relationships; they tended to allocate more resources to the friend and fewer to the peer. Our findings suggest that expectations about a recipient’s prosociality and the ability of mental time travel affect selectivity of resource allocation in children aged 5 and 6 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children engage in direct reciprocity, but the mechanisms underlying such reciprocity remain unclear. In particular, prior work leaves unclear whether children’s reciprocity is simply a response to receiving benefits (regardless of whether the benefits were intended) or driven by a mechanism of rewarding or preferring all benefactors (regardless of whom they benefited). Alternatively, perhaps children engage in genuine reciprocity such that they are particularly prosocial toward benefactors who intentionally provided them with benefits. Our findings support this third, richer possibility; the 3-year-olds who received benefits through the good intentions of a benefactor were subsequently more generous toward the benefactor than children who either (a) received the same benefits from the benefactor unintentionally or (b) observed the benefactor bestow the same benefits on another individual. Thus, young children are especially motivated to benefit those who have demonstrated goodwill toward them, suggesting, as one possible mechanism, an early sense of gratitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normativity is pervasive in everyday human social interactions and perhaps even constitutive of human forms of group and societal living. During the past decade, there has been increased interest in the ontogeny of normativity and the role that norms play in early social reasoning and behavior. Given the ubiquity of normativity, it is vital to investigate the development of children’s normative understanding and behavior in a variety of different contexts, ranging from prosocial behavior to rational action or from linguistic competencies to cultural norms and values. Hence, in this special issue on the early development of the normative mind, researchers from different theoretical traditions have employed a number of different methods (e.g., third-party norm enforcement, judgment and reasoning, social behavior) to address different, yet related, research questions about the ontogeny of normativity. Here, we introduce the reader to the current debate and point to important research questions for the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether children’s values, global and abstract motivations serving as guiding principles, are organized similarly to those of adults, whether values can predict individual differences in children’s sharing behaviors, and whether the normative nature of the situation influences the expression of these individual differences. Children ( N = 243, ages 5–12 years) participated in a values ranking task as part of a visit to a science museum. The majority of children ( n = 150) also participated in a task examining costly sharing (i.e., sharing that results in giving up part of one’s own resources) and non-costly giving (i.e., giving that does not influence one’s own share). Starting from 5 years of age, children showed a structure of values similar to that of adolescents and adults, specifically contrasting preferences for opposing values (i.e., self-transcendence with self-enhancement and openness to change with conservation). Importance given to self-transcendence values related positively to costly sharing but not to non-costly giving, indicating that in situations where it is more normative to share, individual differences in values are less expressed in children’s actual sharing. In addition, children’s sex and age moderated the relation between values and behavior. Children’s values are an important aspect of their developing personalities. Taking them into consideration can greatly promote the research of prosocial and normative development as well as our understanding of individual differences in children’s behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research has demonstrated that children show a robust in-group bias and, concurrently, are highly attuned to the prosocial and antisocial behavior of others. The limited research investigating the capacity for antisocial behavior to attenuate children’s in-group bias has, however, returned mixed findings. Moreover, no research has examined how this might interact with perceived group permeability. Thus, the current study aimed to provide a more complete understanding of the relationship between in-group bias and antisocial behavior, how this interacts with perceptions of out-group behavior, and how group context (permeability) influences these responses. Children at age 4 and 5 years and age 7 and 8 years were assigned to a group randomly or based on their performance of a task. They then watched videos of in-groups and out-groups behaving prosocially and antisocially, in differing combinations, with the key experimental conditions focusing on an antisocial in-group paired with either a prosocial or antisocial out-group. In-group preference was then determined using liking ratings, resource allocation, and perceived similarity to the in-group. For older children, but not younger children, antisocial behavior, but not group permeability, was found to attenuate in-group bias for measures of liking and association. Interestingly, no effect was identified for children’s own resource allocation behavior. This indicates that although there is a robust effect of antisocial behavior on in-group judgments, it does not extend so far as to influence children to behave antisocially themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual attention to high-status peers is well documented, but whether this attentional bias is due to high-status individuals’ leadership and prosocial characteristics or due to their more agonistic behaviors has yet to be examined. To identify the affective associations that may underlie visual attention for high-status versus low-status peers, 122 early adolescents (67 girls; M age = 11.0 years, SD = 0.7) completed a primed attention paradigm. Visual attention was measured using eye tracking as participants looked simultaneously at photographs of two classmates: one nominated by peers as popular and one nominated by peers as unpopular. Prior to each trial, the early adolescents were presented with a positive prime, the word “nice”; a negative prime, the word “stupid”; or no prime. Primary analyses focused on first-gaze preference and total gaze time The results showed a stronger first gaze preference for popular peers than for unpopular peers in the no-prime and negative prime trials than in the positive prime trials. The visual preference for a popular peer, thus, was attenuated by the positive prime. These findings are consistent with the notion that youths may visually attend to high-status peers due to their association with more negative characteristics and the threat they may pose to youths’ own social standing and ability to gain interpersonal resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the development of fairness has become a topic of wide interest, little is known about the correlates and factors that relate to the early ontogeny of fairness-related decision making in preschoolers. The current study assessed 5-year-old children’s consideration of existing inequalities in their resource allocation decisions, that is, their tendency to allocate more resources to poor others than to rich others. In addition, children’s prosocial responding toward others in pain, the amount of their social interaction experiences, and their social-cognitive abilities were assessed. The results provide evidence that children’s early social interaction experiences and empathy-based prosocial responding relate to their fairness-related decision making, supporting a relational systems approach to early prosocial and moral development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children endorse norms of fairness but rarely act on them. We investigated whether a failure of behavioral control can partially explain why children do not share more generously than they do. We experimentally manipulated behavioral control and observed its effects on sharing in 120 children aged 6–9 years of age. Using a between-participants design, we presented children with stories in which a protagonist either exerted behavioral control in an unrelated context or not. Following this, children engaged in a sharing task. We found that children who had been read a story promoting behavioral control shared more than children who had been read a neutral story. This effect held over two different types of instruction. Perceptions of fairness, on the other hand, were identical across conditions. These findings speak to the importance of behavioral control in prosocial behavior, and specifically sharing, during middle childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children’s willingness to share with others is selective, and is affected by their level of affiliation with the recipients of their generosity. We explored affiliation’s impact on sharing behavior with two experiments comparing the effects of two distinct affiliative cues—minimal group membership and shared interests. Children (4- to 6-year-olds) completed a resource allocation task, making forced-choice decisions as to how to distribute stickers between themselves and others. In Experiment 1, the sharing partners were minimal in- and out-group members; in Experiment 2, they differed in their opinion of the participants’ interests. Both experiments’ manipulations affected feelings of affiliation, as indicated by children’s stated friendship preferences and perceptions of similarity. More notably, both minimal group membership and interests affected sharing behavior. Children made fewer generous allocations toward out-group members than toward in-group members. Similarly, children made fewer generous allocations when recipients disliked their interests than when recipients shared those interests or when their opinions were unknown. Across experiments, the recipient manipulations’ effects on generosity were similar in their pattern and magnitude despite fundamental differences between the two affiliative cues. These findings highlight the broad impact of affiliation on young children’s sharing behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study explored how freedom of choice affects preschoolers’ prosocial motivation. Children (3- and 5-year-olds) participated in either a choice condition (where they could decide for themselves whether to help or not) or a no-choice condition (where they were instructed to help). Prosocial motivation was subsequently assessed by measuring the amount children helped an absent peer in the face of an attractive alternative game. The 5-year-olds provided with choice helped more than the children not provided with choice, and this effect was stronger for girls than for boys. There was no difference between conditions for the 3-year-olds. These results highlight the importance of choice in young children’s prosocial development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-evaluative emotions depend on internalized social standards and motivate social action. However, there is a lack of empirical research documenting the impact of self-evaluative emotion on 3- and 4-year-olds’ prosociality. Extant research relates children’s experiences of guilt to empathetic concern and making amends. However, the relationship between guilt and both concern and making amends is potentially reductive. Empathetic concern involves similar bodily expressions to guilt, and amend making is used to distinguish guilt from shame in children. This is the first study to relate the development of both positive and negative self-evaluative emotions to empathetic concern and prosocial choice (making amends and spontaneous help). Results confirm that the broad capacity for self-evaluative emotion is established during the preschool years and relates to empathetic concern. Moreover, these social emotions can be used to predict prosocial choice. Making amends was best predicted by empathetic concern and by children’s responses to achievement (pride following success and lack of shame following failure). Alongside moral pride, pride in response to achievement and resilience to shame was also the best predictor of spontaneous help. The data support the idea that young children’s prosocial choices may be partially driven by the affective drive to maintain an “ideal” self. Psychologists have emphasized that in order to be adaptive, self-evaluative emotion should be guilt oriented rather than shame oriented. However, the adaptive role of pride has been neglected. We call on future research to redress the focus on negative self-evaluation in moral development and further explore the prosocial potential of pride. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although key differences have been found in boys’ and girls’ prosocial behavior toward peers, few studies have systematically examined gender differences in how intrinsic perspective-taking abilities—theory of mind (ToM) and emotion understanding (EU)—and the extrinsic peer environment relate to prosocial behavior. In this prospective longitudinal study, we studied gender differences in the relations between children’s observed prosocial behavior and their ToM, EU, and social preference ratings in 114 children (58 boys and 56 girls). We used conventional ToM and EU tasks at 5 and 7 years of age. Observed prosocial behavior in triadic peer interactions was assessed at both time points. Controlling for gender, age, verbal ability, and earlier prosocial behavior, ToM at 5 years was found to predict prosocial behavior at 7 years. Results also revealed gender-differentiated associations at 7 years, whereby only girls’ prosocial behavior was positively associated with EU. Results are discussed in terms of gender-differentiated patterns of socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential susceptibility theory proposes that a subset of individuals exist who display enhanced susceptibility to both negative (risk-promoting) and positive (development-enhancing) environments. This experiment represents the first attempt to directly test this assumption by exposing children in the experimental group to both negative and positive feedback using puppet role-plays. It thereby serves as an empirical test as well as a methodological primer for testing differential susceptibility. Dutch children ( N = 190, 45.3% girls) between the ages of 4 and 6 years participated. We examined whether negative and positive feedback would differentially affect changes in positive and negative affect, in prosocial and antisocial intentions and behavior, depending on children’s negative emotionality. Results show that on hearing negative feedback, children in the experimental group increased in negative affect and decreased in positive affect more strongly than children in the control group. On hearing positive feedback, children in the experimental group tended to increase in positive affect and decrease in prosocial behavior. However, changes in response to negative or positive feedback did not depend on children’s negative emotionality. Moreover, using reliable change scores, we found support for a subset of “vulnerable” children but not for a subset of “susceptible” children. The findings offer suggestions to guide future differential susceptibility experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Popularity goal predicts aggression and prosocial behavior already in elementary school. • Popularity and popularity goal predict observed as well as peer nominated behavior. • Strong popularity goal predicts low levels of prosocial behavior. • High popularity predicts the use of aggressive strategies. • High popularity also predicts the use of prosocial strategies in a cooperative setting. Whereas previous research with secondary school students has demonstrated that popularity goals and actual popularity status are related to peer-reported aggression, it is unclear whether this is already the case in the upper grades of elementary school. The current study extends previous research by assessing elementary school students, focusing on both aggressive and prosocial behaviors, and importantly by observing aggressive and prosocial behaviors in cooperative and competitive small-group settings. Participants were 173 Dutch fifth- and sixth-grade students (58.2% girls; M age = 11.11 years, SD = 0.72), who self-reported popularity goals and nominated peers for popularity, aggressive behavior, and prosocial behavior. Participants' behavior in a cooperative task and a competitive task, completed in groups of 4, was observed. Results show that popularity goal was related to high levels of aggression according to peers (only for boys) and to low levels of prosocial behavior across reporters and settings. Actual popularity status was related to high levels of strategic aggression across reporters and settings and additional high levels of strategic prosocial behavior in a cooperative setting. Thus, the current study demonstrates that popularity goal is already related to social behavior in elementary school and that desired and actual popularity are not only predictive of the behavior as perceived by peers but also predictive of observed behaviors during group interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Vignette approach to assess distributive behavior among 1,320 children. • Trait justice sensitivity (JS) informs distributions in middle childhood. • Victim JS predicted distributions following the merit and need principle. • Altruistic JS predicted sharing and distributions following the equality principle. • JS predicted distributions beyond Theory of Mind and empathy. Justice sensitivity (JS), the tendency to perceive and adversely respond to injustice, was related to prosocial behavior in different age groups and to distributive preferences in adults. To test influences of JS on sharing and distributive preferences, middle childhood as an important phase for moral development may be particularly interesting. We asked 1320 5- to 12-year-old children (M = 8.05 years, SD = 1.02; 51.2 % girls, 1.3 % transgender and gender-nonconforming) to read five vignettes that made salient the different principles of distributive justice (equality, merit, and need) and to distribute imaginary sweets between themselves and one described child (sharing) or between two described children (distributing). Children also rated their JS, and parents rated children's theory of mind (ToM) abilities and empathy. More concerns for justice for the self (victim JS) predicted distributions following the merit principle and a preference for need over equality and merit when forced to choose among the three. Caring for justice for others (altruistic JS) predicted more sharing, equal distributions, less distributions according to the merit principle, and a preference for equal distributions over merit and need when forced to choose among the three. These associations prevailed when ToM and empathy were included as control variables. The findings underline the importance of justice-related personality traits, such as JS, for moral development in middle childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We investigated the link of children's emotional helping. • Maternal sensitivity influences children's emotional helping. • Children's empathy mediates this effect. • Children's compliance does not mediate this effect. Emotional helping—that is, helping based on others' emotional distress—has been suggested to be a central prosocial response to others in need. Developmental theorizing proposed that emotional helping has social origins. Whereas research indeed demonstrated a link between maternal sensitivity and children's emotional helping, developmental theories stress different mediating processes. Emotion-sharing theories claim empathic concern to be the crucial link for helping, whereas internalization theories base children's helping on children's compliance. To investigate these hypotheses, the current study explored empathy and compliance as two possible mediators for the relation between maternal sensitivity and children's emotional helping at 18 months of age. Overall, maternal sensitivity was positively related to children's empathy, children's compliance, and children's emotional helping. Interestingly, children's empathy—but not children's compliance—mediated the link between maternal sensitivity and children's emotional helping. These findings deepen our understanding of the psychological processes subserving emotional helping during infancy and support theories that stress the socioemotional origins of children's prosocial behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children with insecure attachment to fathers have greater emotional dysregulation. • Greater emotion dysregulation was associated with less prosocial behavior. • Emotion dysregulation, but not emotion regulation served as an intervening variable linking attachment insecurity to child prosocial behavior. • Associations were consistent across child age (6–8 years vs. 9–12 years). There is a lack of research on the development of prosocial behavior in middle childhood. The current study addressed this gap through the application of attachment theory; attachment security has been shown to promote prosocial behavior in early childhood, and emotion regulation may be an important intervening variable in this association. A sample of 199 children (aged 6–12 years) reported on their attachment internal working models for the mother–child and father–child relationships, parents reported on child emotion regulation and emotional lability/dysregulation, and children completed a sticker donation task to assess their prosocial behavior. Child emotional lability/dysregulation served as an intervening variable in the association between father–child attachment security (communication and trust) and greater sticker donation. Mother–child and father–child attachment security was also associated with child emotion regulation, but emotion regulation was not associated with sticker donation. Findings suggest that secure attachment may foster prosocial behavior toward peers in middle childhood primarily by reducing dysregulated responses to the distress of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined children’s evaluation of public and private prosocial giving and whether such evaluation would predict actual behavior. We tested children between 6 and 12 years old ( N = 192) in China, where children are socialized not to call positive attention to themselves. In Study 1, a significant age-related change was found; younger children evaluated public acts of prosocial giving more favorably than private acts, whereas older children showed the opposite pattern. Study 2 not only replicated the findings of Study 1 but also showed that children’s evaluation of public versus private giving predicted their actual behavior in communicating about their own prosocial giving. These findings are the first to show that age-related changes in children’s understanding of generosity predict reputation management behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study used computer vision technology to examine the nonverbal facial expressions of children (6–11 years old) telling antisocial and prosocial lies. Children in the antisocial lying group completed a temptation resistance paradigm where they were asked not to peek at a gift being wrapped for them. All children peeked at the gift and subsequently lied about their behavior. Children in the prosocial lying group were given an undesirable gift and asked if they liked it. All children lied about liking the gift. Nonverbal behavior was analyzed using the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox (CERT), which employs the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), to automatically code children’s facial expressions while lying. Using CERT, children’s facial expressions during antisocial and prosocial lying were accurately and reliably differentiated significantly above chance-level accuracy. The basic expressions of emotion that distinguished antisocial lies from prosocial lies were joy and contempt. Children expressed joy more in prosocial lying than in antisocial lying. Girls showed more joy and less contempt compared with boys when they told prosocial lies. Boys showed more contempt when they told prosocial lies than when they told antisocial lies. The key action units (AUs) that differentiate children’s antisocial and prosocial lies are blink/eye closure, lip pucker, and lip raise on the right side. Together, these findings indicate that children’s facial expressions differ while telling antisocial versus prosocial lies. The reliability of CERT in detecting such differences in facial expression suggests the viability of using computer vision technology in deception research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Preschoolers express a normative stance towards sharing. • Early normative expressions seem to be structured in two factors. • Preschooler's moral self-concept was related to their sharing behavior. • Individual differences in normative and prosocial responding show some consistency. Children increasingly appreciate normative obligations and share resources across the preschool years. But the internal structure and behavioral relevance of normative expressions in the context of sharing—that is, the relation with children's own sharing behavior—remains disputed. Here, 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 90; 37 female) observed protagonists sharing or not sharing resources. As measures of normative expressions, children's evaluation, punishment acceptability, non-costly punishment, and costly punishment of the protagonists as well as their moral self-concept were assessed. To measure actual prosocial behavior, children had the possibility to share resources. A factor analysis revealed that the variety of normative expressions constitutes two distinct factors: normative representation (evaluation and hypothetical punishment) and norm enforcement (actual non-costly and costly punishment). Children's moral self-concept was the only normative expression that related to sharing behavior. Person-centered analyses suggest some consistency in individual differences across normative and prosocial development, with normative expressions and sharing behavior being aligned for some children on a low level and for some children on a high level. This study advances our understanding of early normative development and highlights the internal structure of normative stances during the preschool years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This study examined the development of the Identifiable Victim Effect in 3.5- to 6.5-year-olds. • The recipient was either identified by name or unidentified in a dictator game. • Across ages, children were more likely to share and shared more with the identified than the unidentified recipient. • This study suggests that recipient identifiability promotes prosocial behavior from remarkably early in development. Research in adults has established that identifying an individual (e.g., by name or a photograph) increases adults' prosocial behavior toward that individual. However, little is known about the developmental emergence of this "identifiable victim effect." We conducted a preregistered study to assess the effects of identifiability on young children's prosocial behavior. Children aged 3.5 to 6.5 years were given five stickers that they could distribute between themselves and another child, who was either identified by name or unidentified. Across ages, children were more likely to share—and shared more stickers—with the identified recipient than with the unidentified recipient. These results indicate that recipient identifiability promotes prosocial behavior from remarkably early in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]