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Although numerous individual studies have attempted to link child-parent attachment and prosociality, a systematic picture of that relationship requires a meta-analytic approach that considers different dimensions of prosociality and potential moderators. The current meta-analysis examined 41 studies drawn primarily from North America and Europe and published between 1978 to 2020. Child age ranged from 12 to 53 months at the assessment of child-parent attachment and 12 to 108 months at the assessment of prosociality. Across 35 studies (100 effect sizes, N = 4,611), child-mother attachment security and child prosociality were significantly associated (r = 0.19, 95% CI [0.14, 0.23]). No moderators were identified. Exploratory estimates were also derived for subtypes of child-mother attachment insecurity. Across six studies (eight effect sizes, N = 402), child-father attachment security was significantly associated with prosociality (r = 0.11, 95% CI [0.02, 0.23]). The magnitude of effect sizes did not differ based on parent gender. The discussion considers areas of growth for attachment and prosociality research.

Emotions form the foundation of infants' early social interactions and yet their role in prosocial behaviors is generally limited to situations of distress and other negative emotions. The present article argues that both positive emotions and the emotion of interest play important roles in prosocial behavior and development. First, we explore the ways in which positive emotions characterize infants' everyday prosocial behavior and the relationships that support these behaviors. We then examine the emotion of interest and its role in infants' prosocial behavior. This article synthesizes recent research on positive emotions in early prosocial development and provides a first attempt to link the emotion of interest to prosocial behavior. We close by discussing future directions for research on prosocial behavior with these emotions.

Infants become increasingly helpful during the second year. We investigated experimentally whether adults' explicit scaffolding influences this development. Infants (N = 69, 13-18 months old) participated in a series of simple helping tasks. Half of infants received explicit scaffolding (encouragement and praise), whereas the other half did not. Among younger infants (below 15 months), infants who received explicit scaffolding helped twice as often as infants in the control group, and also helped more on several subsequent trials when no scaffolding was provided. As predicted, older infants were not affected by explicit scaffolding. These results demonstrate the influence of social experiences in early helping, but also how the effects of scaffolding may depend on the developmental level of the child. Less explicit forms of scaffolding may be effective when children are older.

There is an ongoing debate on the role of socialization in the development of infants' helping. Although opportunities for the socialization of early helping are rare in problem solving (bystander intervention), there are many opportunities for socialization in participation (working alongside others), and infants' experiences of participation could socialize problem solving indirectly. The present study links participation and problem solving conceptually by drawing on a Hebbian concept of indirect learning and through a study examining mothers' communicative cues in both forms of helping. Forty mother‐infant dyads engaged in two semi‐structured helping tasks, a participation task and a problem‐solving task at five, eight, and ten months of age. Mothers' communicative cues and infants' return of the object were examined using coding schemes adapted from prior research. Mothers used similar communicative cues (reaches, give‐me gestures, and verbal requests) in both tasks, and more maternal scaffolding contributed to greater object handover. Infants showed higher object handover in participation tasks. The findings, framed in Tomasello's neo‐Vygotskian account of prosocial development, offer a synthesis of the debate on the role of socialization where prosocial behavior emerges first between people, and then becomes individualized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores the effects of parental scaffolding of children's problem solving on the development of executive function (EF). Eighty-two children were assessed at 2, 3, and 4 years of age on a variety of EF tasks and, at ages 2 and 3, on a problem-solving puzzle with which parents offered structured assistance (i.e., scaffolding). Unlike previous studies of parental scaffolding, children's EF was examined at each time point. Scaffolding at age 3 was found to have a direct effect on EF at age 4. Furthermore, scaffolding at age 2 had an indirect on EF at age 4 through the child's verbal ability at age 3. (Contains 3 figures, 5 tables, and 4 footnotes.)

Knobe's laudable conclusion that we make sense of our social world based on moral considerations requires a development account of human thought and a theoretical framework. We outline a view that such a moral framework must be rooted in social interaction. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X10001706