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By the preschool age, children exhibit a diversity of prosocial behaviors that include both sharing resources and helping others. Though recent work has theorized that these prosocial behaviors are differentiated by distinct ages of emergence, developmental trajectories and underlying mechanisms, the experimental evidence in support of the last claim remains scant. The current study focuses on one such cognitive mechanism -- numerical cognition -- seeking to replicate and extend prior work demonstrating the strong link between children's numerical cognition and precise sharing behavior, and further examining its relationship to instrumental helping. In line with theoretical perspectives favoring the differentiation of varieties of prosocial behaviors, we hypothesize that numerical cognition underlies precise sharing, but not precise helping behavior. Eighty-five 3 to 6-year-old children completed two procedurally similar tasks designed to elicit sharing and instrumental helping behavior, in addition to a Give-N task measuring their symbolic counting skills. Despite the procedural similarity, and the implicit norm of providing half (5 out of 10) stickers in both tasks, children's counting proficiency predicted precise sharing, but not precise helping. These results indicate a unique relationship between children's developing numerical cognition and behavioral fairness, providing empirical support for claims that varieties of prosocial behavior are supported by distinct underlying mechanisms.

When young children recruit others to help a person in need, media reports often treat it as a remarkable event. Yet it is unclear how commonly children perform this type of pro-social behavior and what forms of social understanding, cognitive abilities, and motivational factors promote or discourage it. In this study, 48 three- to four-year-old children could choose between two actors to retrieve an out-of-reach object for a third person; during this event, one actor was physically unable to provide help. Nearly all of children's responses appropriately incorporated the actors' action capacities, indicating that rational prosocial reasoning--the cognitive basis for effective indirect helping--is common at this young age. However, only half of children actually directed an actor to help, suggesting that additional motivational factors constrained their prosocial actions. A behavioral measure of social inhibition and within-task scaffolding that increased children's personal involvement were both strongly associated with children's initiation of indirect helping behavior. These results highlight social inhibition and recognizing one's own potential agency as key motivational challenges that children must overcome to recruit help for others.

Research Findings: There are sparse data on children's use of executive function (EF) and spatial skills in block play. However, there are important implications for studying EF and spatial skills with blocks across cultures, especially regarding best practices for supporting social-cognitive development in under-resourced populations and consideration of culturally unique customs and practices. Therefore, the current study compared EF-based skills and spatial block building behaviors in Canadian and Tzotzil Maya children. Participants included 82 preschoolers (55% Canadian) ages 48–59 months (M age = 54.37 months, SD = 3.37) observed and coded during a group block play session with peers. Controlling for demographic covariates, a composite EF-based variable including six behaviors (intentional selection of blocks, taking time, response inhibition, replacing/moving blocks, stabilizing, aligning) was significantly and positively associated with spatial configurations in block structures (symmetry, β =.34; tiered orientation, β =.37) The associations did not vary by culture. Practice or Policy: Results provide new knowledge about use of EF-based skills and spatial skills in an ecologically valid context and implications for cross-cultural measurement and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of two experiments, we examined 5-year-old children's motivations for learning new conventional actions. Children watched two teachers open a novel container; the teachers differed in the nonfunctional, conventional actions they used in the process. In Experiment 1, one teacher spoke with a native accent and the other spoke with a nonnative accent. Children showed a preference for following the native-accented teacher, and this preference was interpreted as a motivation to match an in-group member. In Experiment 2, the speech accent of the teacher was crossed with explicit expressions of (un)certainty by the teachers. In this case, children preferred the more certain teacher, even when the certain teacher spoke with a nonnative speech accent. This preference was taken as demonstrating a utilitarian motivation that led to choosing the teacher most likely to have useful information. Taken together, these results suggest that by 5 years of age, children are motivated by both utilitarian and in-group considerations when selecting between sources of information; however, when forced to select between the two motivations, utilitarian concerns take precedent.

The testimony of others and direct experience play a major role in the development of children's knowledge. Children actively use questions to seek others' testimony and explore the environment. It is unclear though whether children distinguish when it is better to ask from when it is better to try to find an answer by oneself. In 2 experiments, we examined the ability of 4- and 6-year-olds to select between looking and asking to determine visible and invisible properties of entities (e.g., hair color vs. knowledge of French). All children chose to look more often for visible than invisible properties. However, only 6-year-olds chose above chance to look for visible properties and to ask for invisible properties. Four-year-olds showed a preference for looking in one experiment and asking in the other. The results suggest substantial development in the efficacy of children's learning in early childhood. (Contains 3 figures, 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)

This study investigates the diversity of early prosocial behavior by examining the ability of ninety-five 2- to 4-year-olds to provide aid to an adult experimenter displaying instrumental need, emotional distress, and material desire. Children provided appropriate aid in response to each of these cues with high consistency over multiple trials. In contrast to the consistency with which the children provided aid within each task, there were no cross-task correlations, and the tendency to respond to each of the cues revealed unique developmental trajectories. Taken together, these results provide preliminary support for the importance of examining the cues to which children are responding and of differentiating between varieties of aid when considering the development of prosocial behavior.

Prosocial behaviors are a diverse group of actions that are integral to human social life. In this study, we examined the ability of 18- and 24-month-old infants to engage in three types of other-oriented behaviors, specifically helping, sharing, and comforting. Infants in both age groups engaged in more prosocial behavior on trials in which an unfamiliar adult experimenter required aid (experimental conditions) than on those in which she did not (control conditions) across two of the three prosocial tasks (i.e., helping and sharing). The infants engaged in these behaviors with similar frequency; however, there was no correlation between the tasks. The implications for the construct of prosocial behavior and the presence of a prosocial disposition are discussed. (Contains 1 footnote and 3 figures.)

In 3 experiments, the authors examined whether a single act of testimony can inform children's subsequent information seeking. In Experiment 1, participants saw one informant give a correct and another informant give an incorrect answer to a question, assessed who was "right" ("wrong"), and decided to whom to address a 2nd question. Adults and 7-year-olds but not 4-year-olds selected the previously correct informant. In Experiment 2, after assessing which informant was ("not") "very good" at answering, even 4-year-olds selected the previously correct informant. In Experiment 3, in the absence of external demands to evaluate the informants, 7-year-olds and adults still selected the previously correct informant. Thus, a single encounter is sufficient for 7-year-olds and adults to engage in selective information seeking and trait labels enable 4-year-olds to do so too. (Contains 1 table.)

The goal of this study was to better understand similarities and differences in preschool children's expression of needs and prosocial responsiveness to peers' needs across two culturally distinct contexts. Preschoolers were observed in a semi‐naturalistic design across rural Mexico and urban Canada, wherein they were instructed to build a tower with blocks. Three‐ to 6‐year‐olds (N = 306; 48% female) were divided into 64 peer groups. We coded for children's expression of needs (instrumental, material, or emotional), responses to prosocial opportunities (prosociality, denial, or no response), prosociality without an apparent need (spontaneous prosociality), and types of prosocial behavior (helping, sharing, or comforting). While instrumental and material needs were expressed similarly across both samples, Tzotzil Maya children expressed fewer emotional needs than Canadian children. Failing to respond to others' needs, followed by denial, were the most frequent need‐provoked response in both countries; surprisingly, only 9% of needs received a prosocial response. Though need‐provoked prosociality was rare in both cultural contexts, children engaged in considerable spontaneous prosociality which varied as a function of age, gender, and cultural context. Lastly, Canadian more than Tzotzil Maya children denied emotional and instrumental needs (but not material needs). The findings inform how cultural practices may shape the presentation of needs and prosocial responsiveness in peer interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When preschoolers evaluate actions and agents, they typically neglect agents' intentions and focus on action outcomes instead. By contrast, intentions count much more than outcomes for older children and adults. This phenomenon has traditionally been seen as evidence of a developmental change in children's concept of what is morally good and bad. However, a growing number of studies shows that infants are able to reason about agents' intentions and take them into account in their spontaneous sociomoral evaluations. Here we argue that this puzzling U-shaped trajectory in children's judgments is best accounted for by a model that posits developmental continuity in moral competence and emphasizes the effect of immature executive function skills on preschoolers' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have provided evidence that young children already engage in sharing behavior. The underlying social-cognitive mechanisms, however, are still under debate. In particular, it is unclear whether or not young children's sharing is motivated by an appreciation of others' wealth. Manipulating the material needs of recipients in a sharing task (Experiment 1) and a resource allocation task (Experiment 2), we show that 5- but not 3-year-old children share more with poor than wealthy individuals. The 3-year-old children even showed a tendency to behave less selfishly towards the rich, yet not the poor recipient. This suggests that very early instances of sharing behavior are not motivated by a consideration of others' material needs. Moreover, the results show that 5-year-old children were rather inclined to give more to the poor individual than distributing the resources equally, demonstrating that their wish to support the poor overruled the otherwise very prominent inclination to share resources equally. This indicates that charity has strong developmental roots in preschool children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]