Revisiting Young Children's Understanding of the Psychological Causes of Behavior

The effects of maternal competence and situational stress level on children's help-seeking expectations across 4 to 6 years of age

Help-seeking is a crucial problem-solving strategy for young children. However, it is not yet clear how children weigh different cues to make help-seeking decisions across preschool years, especially in caregiver-child interactions. The current study used a social expectation task to examine the effects of maternal competence and situational stress level on 4- to 6-year-old children's help-seeking expectations from a third-party perspective. Children's expectations of whether to seek help were measured. A total fo 135 Han Chinese children aged 4 to 6 years from an eastern city of China participated in this study. We found that 4- to 6-year-olds expected to seek more help from a competent mother than from an incompetent mother in low-stress conditions. When the stress level was high, however, they expected to seek help regardless of maternal competence levels. These results suggest that the interaction between the situational stress level and maternal competence determines young children's help-seeking expectations across preschool years. They further suggest that young children seek help from mothers in an active and discriminatory way.

Young children's choices and thoughts about pro-social behaviour towards others with overweight

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to investigate weight bias within young children's pro-social choices between characters who differed in body size.

METHODS

Seventy-six children aged 4-6 years read stories asking them to choose who they would first help, share with, comfort, and steal from, between a healthy weight and child with overweight. They also selected the one character they would most like to play with. Children's reasoning for these choices was recorded and analysed.

RESULTS

The character with overweight was helped first in only a third of the choices made. Children chose the characters with overweight more often as the target for anti-social action. In friendship selections, children overwhelmingly rejected the characters with overweight. However, weight bias was not prominent in the reasons children gave for the choices. Most children were not negative about body shape, weight or appearance. Similarly, in friendship choices, these were mostly expressed positively to the character chosen. Only a small minority of children were explicitly negative about the character with overweight.

CONCLUSIONS

A better understanding of weight bias acquisition and variation between children will benefit those working in health care and educational settings. Future research should link with developmental theory, such as on social categorization and theory of mind.

Mentalistic and normative frameworks in children's explanations of others' behaviors

As they learn to navigate the social world, children construct frameworks to interpret others' behavior. The present studies examined two such frameworks: a mentalistic framework, which construes behavior as driven by internal mental states; and a normative framework, which presumes people act in accordance with social norms. Participants included 101 children (ages 4, 7, and 10; 81% White; 41% female) and 35 adults (66% female) tested in the northeastern United States from 2019 to 2021. Children and adults utilized both mentalistic and normative frameworks to explain others' behaviors. Framework use depended on features of the behavior being explained. Minimal developmental differences were observed. The relative independence and the utility of the mentalistic and normative frameworks for naïve reasoning about behavior are considered.

Cultural Similarities and Differences in Explaining Others’ Behavior in 4- to 9-Year-Old Children From Three Cultural Contexts

Previous studies suggest that people from the Western hemisphere tend to explain others’ behavior based on a person’s traits and dispositions, while participants from non-Western cultural settings more likely refer to situational factors. From a developmental perspective, it has been suggested that culture-specific modes of explaining behavior gradually emerge during late childhood and adolescence. The present study explored whether traces of a corresponding culture-specific development can be found at earlier ages when using simplified assessments. In total, 438 children between 4 and 9 years old from Münster (urban Germany), Kyoto (urban Japan), and Cotacachi (rural Ecuador), were asked to explain positive and deviant behaviors of children depicted in simple picture-based vignettes. While more internal attributions were given in Münster than in Kyoto and Cotacachi children at 4 to 5 years old, these cultural differences disappeared as internal attributions significantly increased with age in Kyoto and Cotacachi but not Münster children. Analyzing children’s explanations on a level of subcategories revealed more subtle cultural specificities. For example, when giving internal explanations, Cotacachi children focused on stable traits, while Münster children emphasized individual desires and Kyoto children highlighted more volatile aspects. Cross-cultural differences in children’s social explanations could partially be explained by mothers’ preference for autonomy-related socialization goals. Taken together, this study provides evidence for an earlier onset of internal explanations when they are culturally accentuated and further calls for a more nuanced approach to capture culture-specific meaning systems reflected in everyday social explanations.

This is not what I expected: The impact of prior expectations on children's and adults' preferences and emotions

We examined the influence of prior expectations on 4- to 10-year-olds' and adults' preferences and emotions following an undesirable outcome (N = 205; 49% female, 51% male; 6% Asian, 1% Black, 13% Hispanic/Latino [non-White], 57% White, 18% multiracial, and 5% another race/ethnicity; 75% with a college-educated parent). Participants attempted to win a chance game with multiple prizes; the worst prize being a pencil. The game was rigged so that half of the participants lost, and the other half won. Regardless of the game outcome, everyone received a pencil. For winning participants (high-expectation condition), the pencil was worse than the prize they expected; whereas for losing participants (low-expectation condition), the pencil was better than the "nothing" they expected. Participants rated how much they liked and felt about the pencil preoutcome, postoutcome, when imagining having held an alternative prior expectation, and after learning that everyone received a pencil. Results showed that 6- to 10-year-olds and adults with low (vs. high) expectations liked the pencil more, with emotion ratings trending in the same direction. Prior expectations did not influence younger children's affective experiences. More participants with low (vs. high) expectations also expressed a positive outlook about the pencil, which increased with age and correlated with higher postoutcome emotions. More adults than children explained emotions as caused by thoughts, and only adults consistently reasoned that their preferences and emotions would have differed had they held alternative prior expectations. Once knowing that everyone received a pencil, 6- to 10-year-olds and adults liked the pencil more and felt better. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's and Adults' Beliefs about the Stability of Traits from Infancy to Adulthood: Contributions of Age and Executive Function

We examined developmental differences and sources of variability in trait reasoning. Four- to 10-year-olds and adults (N=198) rated how mean or nice "medium-mean" and "medium-nice" babies, kids, and teenagers were earlier in their lifetime and would be at older ages. Participants expected nice-labeled characters to be nice throughout their lives (participant age effects were null). In contrast, we documented age-related differences in judgments about meanness. With increasing participant age, individuals expected that meanness present in infancy, childhood, and adolescence would persist into adulthood. We discovered a curvilinear pattern in assessments of whether meanness originates during infancy: Four- to 5-year-olds and adults expected mean-labeled kids and teenagers to have been nicer as babies than did 6- to 10-year-olds. Controlling for age and working memory, participants with better inhibitory control more frequently expected mean-labeled individuals to remain mean across the lifespan, but inhibitory control was unrelated to judgments about nice-labeled individuals.

The Influence of Gender Categories and Gender Stereotypes on Young Children's Generalizations of Biological and Behavioral Characteristics

We examined the influence of categorization and stereotyping on young children's (N = 96; 39 to 71 months of age) use of gender to make generalizations regarding novel biological and behavioral characteristics. Participants were asked to sort pictures of children according to either gender, common gender stereotypes, or shirt color. Then participants performed a triad inductive reasoning task. Children in the Stereotype condition consistently generalized on the basis of gender, but performance was inconsistent in the absence of stereotyping. Results are discussed in relation to variability in early gender cognition.

Content counts: A trait and moral reasoning framework for children's selective social learning

We present evidence that evaluative information plays a major role in children's selective social learning. We demonstrate that social learning patterns differ as a function of whether children are exposed to positively or negatively valenced information (e.g., content; informant characteristics) and that these patterns can be understood in the context of children's schemas for social groups, morality, and trait understanding. We highlight that attention must be given to theoretical ties between social learning and children's trait judgments and moral reasoning to strengthen our understanding of selective trust and account for variations in children's sophistication when they judge potential sources of information. Finally, we suggest revisions to current theoretical frameworks and offer suggestions to move the field forward.

Is There a Downside to Anticipating the Upside? Children's and Adults' Reasoning About How Prior Expectations Shape Future Emotions

Four- to 10-year-olds and adults (N = 205) responded to vignettes involving three individuals with different expectations (high, low, and no) for a future event. Participants judged characters' pre-outcome emotions, as well as predicted and explained their feelings following three events (positive, attenuated, and negative). Although adults rated high-expectation characters more negatively than low-expectation characters after all outcomes, children shared this intuition starting at 6-7 years for negative outcomes, 8-10 years for attenuated, and never for positive. Comparison to baseline (no expectation) indicated that understanding the costs of high expectations emerges first and remains more robust across age than recognition that low expectations carry benefits. Explanation analyses further clarified this developing awareness about the relation between thoughts and emotions over time.