Young Children's Attribution of Intentionality to Themselves and Others

Abstract

KEASEY, CHARLES BLAKE. Young Children's Attribution of Intentionality to Themselves and Others. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 261-264. Piaget's notion that children's theoretical moral thought would evidence greater usage of intentionality toward selfas opposed to other-oriented hypothetical situations was tested in 60 kindergartners and 60 first graders. Half of each age group was presented with story pairs about other children, and the other half pretended to be the central character in the story pairs. Responses of kindergartners exposed to self-oriented situations not only evidenced significantly greater usage of intentionality than those of the other kindergartners (69% vs. 40%), but did so at a rate comparable with the 2 first-grade groups. The need for more naturalistic methodologies to test the self/other difference in children's active as opposed to theoretical moral thought is discussed.