DEVELOPMENTAL RESPONSES TO QUANTITY CHANGES IN ARTIFICIAL SOCIAL OBJECTS

Abstract

First-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children were shown cartoons depicting different quantity changes in circles and triangles described as social objects. First-grade children responded mainly in terms of perceptually salient movements characterizing all the cartoons. Both groups of older children responded mainly in terms of intentions they attributed to the social objects in the simpler cartoons. But their responses to more dificult cartoons emphasized movement and quantity change. These and other results support the idea that social judgment processes evolve in children according to some of the general cognitive development principles suggested by Piaget and Bruner. Using an experimental technique derived from Heider and Simmel's pioneering work on apparent behavior (1944), this study tests the proposition that as children get older their social cognition is increasingly determined by intentional meanings they infer from social stimulus patterns. The study is based on the assumption that certain general trends in cognitive-development theories can be applied to the specific problem of impression formation in children. Werner (1948) contends that a child's causal thinking may be defined as an increasing adaptation of thought to objective fact and that the