Children's Judgments Research Articles

Children's prototypic facial expressions during emotion-eliciting conversations with their mothers.

Despite theoretical claims that emotions are primarily communicated through prototypic facial expressions, empirical evidence is surprisingly scarce. This study aimed to (a) test whether children produced more components of a prototypic emotional facial expression during situations judged or self-reported to involve the corresponding emotion than situations involving other emotions (termed "intersituational specificity"), (b) test whether children produced more components of the prototypic expression corresponding to a situation's judged or self-reported emotion than components of other emotional expressions (termed "intrasituational specificity"), and (c) examine coherence between children's self-reported emotional experience and observers' judgments of children's emotions. One hundred and 20 children (ages 7-9) were video-recorded during a discussion with their mothers. Emotion ratings were obtained for children in 441 episodes. Children's nonverbal behaviors were judged by observers and coded by FACS-trained researchers. Children's self-reported emotion corresponded significantly to observers' judgments of joy, anger, fear, and sadness but not surprise. Multilevel modeling results revealed that children produced joy facial expressions more in joy episodes than nonjoy episodes (supporting intersituational specificity for joy) and more joy and surprise expressions than other emotional expressions in joy and surprise episodes (supporting intrasituational specificity for joy and surprise). However, children produced anger, fear, and sadness expressions more in noncorresponding episodes and produced these expressions less than other expressions in corresponding episodes. Findings suggest that communication of negative emotion during social interactions-as indexed by agreement between self-report and observer judgments-may rely less on prototypic facial expressions than is often theoretically assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Vegetarian and Nonvegetarian Children's Judgments of Harm to Animals and Humans

Abstract This research study sought to determine if vegetarian and nonvegetarian children differ in their evaluations of animal suffering as compared to human suffering. In particular, we asked if ...

Le Roux v Dey and Children's Rights Approaches to Judging

The South African jurisprudence on the rights of children is vibrant and generally progressive, and is supported by an enabling constitutional and statutory framework. The majority decision in Le Roux v Dey 2011 3 SA 274 (CC), however, ignores the rights of children, and this is in stark contrast to some of the minority judgments in the same case. This contrast is surprising, considering that all of the judges applied the same legal framework. With reference to an emerging interest in defining children's rights approaches to judging, this article critically analyses the majority and minority judgments, and establishes their vulnerabilities and strengths as children's rights judgments. In the process, suggestions are made in relation to defining a children's rights approach to judging.

Adults' and Children's Understanding of How Expertise Influences Learning.

Adults and children use information about expertise to infer what a person is likely to know, but it is unclear whether they realize that expertise also has implications for learning. We explore adults' and children's understanding that expertise in a particular category supports learning about a closely related category. In four experiments, 5-year-olds and adults (n=160) judged which of two people would be better at learning about a new category. When faced with an expert and a nonexpert, adults consistently indicated that expertise supports learning in a closely related category; however, children's judgments were inconsistent and were strongly influenced by the description of the nonexpert. The results suggest that although children understand what it means to be an expert, they may judge an individual's learning capacity based on different considerations than adults.

Adult judgments of children’s pain and fear during venipuncture: The impact of adult and child sex

ABSTRACT Background Low levels of agreement between caregiver and child reports of acute pain are well documented. Aims This study builds on prior research through exploring factors that may contribute to low caregiver–child concordance. Specifically, the study examined the influence of adult and child sex on adult judgments of children’s pain and fear during venipuncture and examined whether trait parental pain catastrophizing, empathy, and anxiety predicted judgment accuracy. Methods Using a judgment study paradigm, 160 participants (82 women) viewed 20 10-s video clips of children (10 boys, 10 girls) undergoing venipuncture and rated each child’s pain and fear. Adults’ ratings were compared to the children’s own ratings. Adults completed measures of trait parental pain catastrophizing, dispositional empathy, and trait anxiety. Results Adults accurately judged boys’ pain and fear significantly more often than that of girls. Further, adults underestimated and overestimated girls’ pain and overestimated girls’ fear significantly more frequently than that of boys. No effects of adult sex or adult by child sex interactions emerged. Parental pain catastrophizing significantly predicted underestimation of girls’ pain, with adults who engaged in more catastrophizing being less likely to underestimate girls’ pain. The variables did not predict adult judgment of child pain for women and men separately and did not predict adult judgment of child fear when examined by adult sex, child sex, or both combined. Conclusions Child sex influences adult pain and fear judgments, with girls being more vulnerable to inaccurate assessment than boys. Higher levels of parental pain catastrophizing may buffer against adults’ propensities to underestimate girls’ pain.

Distinct profiles of information-use characterize identity judgments in children and low-expertise adults.

Face processing abilities vary across the life span: increasing across childhood and adolescence, peaking around 30 years of age, and then declining. Despite extensive investigation, researchers have yet to identify qualitative changes in face processing during development that can account for the observed improvements on laboratory tests. The current study constituted the first detailed characterization of face processing strategies in a large group of typically developing children and adults (N = 200) using a novel adaptation of the Bubbles reverse correlation technique (Gosselin & Schyns, 2001). Resultant classification images reveal a compelling age-related shift in strategic information use during participants' judgments of face identity. This shift suggests a move from an early reliance upon high spatial frequency details around the mouth, eye-brow and jaw-line in young children (∼8 years) to an increasingly more interlinked approach, focused upon the eye region and the center of the face in older children (∼11 years) and adults. Moreover, we reveal that the early versus late phases of this developmental trajectory correspond with the profiles of information use observed in weak versus strong adult face processors. Together, these results provide intriguing new evidence for an important functional role for strategic information use in the development of face expertise. (PsycINFO Database Record

Developing Moral Emotion Attributions in Happy Victimizer Task: Role of Victim Information

AbstractPrevious happy victimizer (HV) studies have shown that preschool and early elementary school children attribute happy emotions to the violator of moral rules. This study examines the effects of information pertaining to the victim in HV stories on children's emotion attributions. In Study 1, 55 children (aged 5–6 and 7–8 years) participated. Participants heard three types of stories: (a) victim sadness resulting from a character's wrongdoing (normal HV story); (b) victim happiness resulting from a character's wrongdoing (non‐canonical HV story); and (c) victim sadness resulting from an accident (accident story). The children were required to infer the victimizer's feelings and to justify their attributions. Children demonstrated more positive emotion attributions for non‐canonical HV stories than the normal and accident versions. In Study 2, 57 children (aged 5–6 and 7–8 years) judged two types of HV tasks (a story featuring a younger child as victim and a normal HV story). Both groups demonstrated more negative emotion attributions for the young victim stories than the normal HV stories, indicating that children's judgment varied according to contexts and different information in determining emotion attributions.

The development of intention-based morality: The influence of intention salience and recency, negligence, and outcome on children's and adults' judgments.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the influences on 4-8 year-olds' and adults' moral judgments. In both, participants were told stories from previous studies that had indicated that children's judgments are largely outcome-based. Building on recent research in which one change to these studies' methods resulted in substantially more intention-based judgment, in Experiment 1 (N = 75) the salience and recency of intention information were increased, and in Experiment 2 (N = 99) carefulness information (i.e., the absence of negligence) was also added. In both experiments even the youngest children's judgments were primarily intention-based, and in Experiment 2 punishment judgments were similar to adults' from 5-6 years. Comparisons of data across studies and experiments indicated that both changes increased the proportion of intention-based punishment judgments-but not acceptability judgments-across age-groups. These findings challenge and help to explain those of much previous research, according to which children's judgments are primarily outcome-based. However, younger participants continued to judge according to outcome more than older participants. This might indicate that young children are more influenced by outcomes than are adults, but other possible explanations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Neural correlates of conventional and harm/welfare-based moral decision-making.

The degree to which social norms are processed by a unitary system or dissociable systems remains debated. Much research on children's social-cognitive judgments has supported the distinction between "moral" (harm/welfare-based) and "conventional" norms. However, the extent to which these norms are processed by dissociable neural systems remains unclear. To address this issue, 23 healthy participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they rated the wrongness of harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions and neutral vignettes. Activation significantly greater than the neutral vignette baseline was observed in regions implicated in decision-making regions including rostral/ventral medial frontal, anterior insula and dorsomedial frontal cortices when evaluating both harm/welfare-based and social-conventional transgressions. Greater activation when rating harm/welfare-based relative to social-conventional transgressions was seen through much of ACC and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus. Greater activation was observed in superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left PCC, and temporal-parietal junction when rating social-conventional transgressions relative to harm/welfare-based transgressions. These data suggest that decisions regarding the wrongness of actions, irrespective of whether they involve care/harm-based or conventional transgressions, recruit regions generally implicated in affect-based decision-making. However, there is neural differentiation between harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions. This may reflect the particular importance of processing the intent of transgressors of conventional norms and perhaps the greater emotional content or salience of harm/welfare-based transgressions.

Bullying and repeated conventional transgressions in Swedish schools: How do gender and bullying roles affect students’ conceptions?

AbstractBullying is a moral transgression. Recognizing the importance of approaching bullying from a moral perspective, the present study examines whether children's judgments and reasoning to justify their judgments differ between bullying and repeated conventional transgressions. Our study also explores differences by gender and differences among bullies, victims, and uninvolved students. Participants included 381 students from 13 elementary schools in Sweden. Findings indicate that children judge bullying as more wrong than repeated conventional transgressions; use moral reasons more frequently in their justifications about bullying than about repeated conventional transgressions; and use conventional reasons more frequently to justify their judgments on repeated conventional transgressions as compared with bullying. Female students and nonbullies judged bullying and repeated conventional transgressions as more wrong and used moral reasons more frequently in their justifications of judgments of bullying than did male students and bullies. Male students reported bullying more than did female students. Implications for practice are also discussed.

Investigating the origins of political views: biases in explanation predict conservative attitudes in children and adults.

We tested the hypothesis that political attitudes are influenced by an information-processing factor - namely, a bias in the content of everyday explanations. Because many societal phenomena are enormously complex, people's understanding of them often relies on heuristic shortcuts. For instance, when generating explanations for such phenomena (e.g., why does this group have low status?), people often rely on facts that they can retrieve easily from memory - facts that are skewed toward inherent or intrinsic features (e.g., this group is unintelligent). We hypothesized that this bias in the content of heuristic explanations leads to a tendency to (1) view socioeconomic stratification as acceptable and (2) prefer current societal arrangements to alternative ones, two hallmarks of conservative ideology. Moreover, since the inherence bias in explanation is present across development, we expected it to shape children's proto-political judgments as well. Three studies with adults and 4- to 8-year-old children (N=784) provided support for these predictions: Not only did individual differences in reliance on inherent explanations uniquely predict endorsement of conservative views (particularly the stratification-supporting component; Study 1), but manipulations of this explanatory bias also had downstream consequences for political attitudes in both children and adults (Studies 2 and 3). This work contributes to our understanding of the origins of political attitudes.

Development of understanding of intentionality and moral judgments in preschoolers

To explore the development of preschoolers' understanding of intentionality and moral judgments, we administered 3 tasks (classic intentionality, skill intentionality, and awareness intentionality) to 344 children aged between 3 and 6 years. The results showed that children's understanding of intentionality and moral judgments developed with increasing age. That is, the intentionality and moral judgments made by 3- to 5-year-olds were generally based on behavioral outcomes. In contrast, 6-year-old children started to make judgments by combining behavioral outcomes with intentionality conditions, which meant that they had started to consider different factors so as to analyze and judge the intentionality and morality of behaviors objectively. The developmental trajectory of intentionality and morality revealed by our study provides theoretical support for guiding children's intentionality and moral judgments.

She bought the unicorn from the pet store: Six- to seven-year-olds are strongly inclined to generate natural explanations.

In two experiments (N = 64), we told 6- to 7-year-olds about improbable or impossible outcomes (Experiment 1) and about impossible outcomes concerning ordinary or magical agents (Experiment 2). In both experiments, children claimed that the outcomes were impossible and could not happen, but nonetheless generated realistic and natural explanations for the outcomes. These findings show that 6- to 7-year-olds are strongly inclined to provide natural explanations. The findings are also informative about children's judgments about whether outcomes are possible, and further suggest that asymmetries between children's predictions and explanations may stem from differences in how these 2 forms of reasoning are constrained by possibility. (PsycINFO Database Record

Children's and adults' perception of questions and statements from terminal fundamental frequency contours.

The present study compared children's and adults' identification and discrimination of declarative questions and statements on the basis of terminal cues alone. Children (8-11 years, n = 41) and adults (n = 21) judged utterances as statements or questions from sentences with natural statement and question endings and with manipulated endings that featured intermediate fundamental frequency (F0) values. The same adults and a different sample of children (n = 22) were also tested on their discrimination of the utterances. Children's judgments shifted more gradually across categories than those of adults, but their category boundaries were comparable. In the discrimination task, adults found cross-boundary comparisons more salient than within-boundary comparisons. Adults' performance on the identification and discrimination tasks is consistent with but not definitive regarding categorical perception of statements and questions. Children, by contrast, discriminated the cross-boundary comparisons no better than other comparisons. The findings indicate age-related sharpening in the perception of statements and questions based on terminal F0 cues and the gradual emergence of distinct perceptual categories.

Now you see race, now you don’t: Verbal cues influence children’s racial stability judgments

Research suggests that young children do not consistently believe that race is stable (e.g., that a Black child will grow up to be a Black adult). Here, we tested the strength of White and minority children’s beliefs by testing whether verbal cues influenced the extent to which they believed in the relative stability of race versus emotional expression. We presented participants (5–6 years, 9–10 years, adults) with images of children who were Black or White, and happy or angry, and asked them to indicate which of two adults each child would grow up to be: one matching on emotion but not race, or one matching on race but not emotion. Verbal cuing had strong effects on both younger and older children's choices (e.g., cuing emotional expressions strengthened emotion-matches; cuing skin color strengthened race-matches), although racial minorities were less susceptible to cuing. Verbal cues had weaker effects on children's judgments about the stability of gender. These results show that race concepts vary across age and racial groups, that verbal framing influences younger and older children’s beliefs about racial stability, and that belief in racial stability is relatively weak between the ages of 5 and 10.

Children's Judgments and Reasoning About Same-Sex Romantic Relationships.

Children's (5-, 7- to 8-, and 10- to 11-year-olds), and adolescents' (13- to 14-year-olds) judgments and reasoning about same-sex romantic relationships were examined (N=128). Participants' beliefs about the acceptability and legal regulation of these relationships were assessed, along with their judgments and beliefs about excluding someone because of his or her sexual orientation and the origins of same-sex attraction. Older participants evaluated same-sex romantic relationships more positively and used more references to personal choice and justice/discrimination reasoning to support their judgments. Younger participants were less critical of a law prohibiting same-sex relationships and were more likely to believe it was not acceptable to violate this law. Beliefs about origins of same-sex attraction showed age-specific patterns in their associations with evaluations.

Judgments of damage to public versus private property in Chinese children at different historical times.

This study examined children's judgments of damage to public versus private property in China at two historical times. Participants were two cohorts (1980 and 2012) of elementary school children at ages 7, 9, and 11years. The children were administered paired stories that described a protagonist who damaged public or private property with a good or bad intention. The results showed that children in the 2012 cohort were less likely than their counterparts in the 1980 cohort to judge damage to public property as more culpable than damage to private property. The cohort differences were more evident in older children than in younger children. The results suggest that macro-level contexts may play an important role in shaping children's judgments.

Mapping children's and adolescents' judgment rules for assessing the risk of disease transmission from sick friends

AbstractKnowing the way children and adolescents assess the risk of disease transmission is important because this kind of knowledge may allow health caregivers to better communicate with them. We had 587 students in Spain and France aged 7–16 judge the risk of disease transmission in 28 scenarios of students visiting a sick friend. The scenarios were composed according to a three within‐subject orthogonal design: type of contact (from no contact to prolonged close contact), type of disease (contagious vs. noncontagious), and number of contacts. Cluster analysis revealed six main clusters, labeled “Contagion can never been ruled out,” “Depends on type of physical contact,” “Depends on type of disease,” “Depends simultaneously on contact and disease,” “Depends conjunctively on contact and disease,” and “Categorical thinking.” The composition of these clusters depended strongly on age level. From a practical perspective, even 7‐year‐olds seem to be fully aware of the issue of contagion, although they overgeneralize the risk. As a result, progress in understanding might be best achieved through a process of unlearning rather than learning.Highlights We examined the way children and adolescents judge the risk of contagion. Five hundred eighty‐seven students aged 7–16 judged the risk of disease transmission in 28 scenarios of students visiting a sick friend that were composed according to a three within‐subject design: type of contact × type of disease × number of contacts. Six judgment rules were found. They were labeled “Contagion can never been ruled out,” “Depends on type of contact,” “Depends on type of disease,” “Depends simultaneously on contact and disease,” “Depends conjunctively on contact and disease,” and “Categorical thinking.” Even 7‐year‐olds seemed to be fully aware of the issue of contagion, although they overgeneralize the risk. As a result, progress in understanding might be best achieved through a process of unlearning rather than learning.

"That's Not Fair!" Children's Judgments of Maternal Fairness and Good/Bad Intentions

Do children use their own moral judgments as a template against which to judge a parent’s fairness, and does that depend on the child’s age? Piaget’s concept of objective-to-subjective responsibility (a focus on outcome to a focus on intentions) was the template for the current study. The research question was how do children of different ages evaluate the fairness of mothers’ praise/blame for acts featuring different combinations of good/bad intentions and outcome. Forty-eight children (ages 3–11 years) heard two stories in which the outcome did not match the intentions. There were two versions of each story type: In one, the mother praised the child in the story; in the other, she blamed the child. Findings were that (a) children under 7 judged mothers who praised as fair and mothers who blamed as unfair regardless of the intentionality of the act, whereas (b) children 7 and older judged fairness based on consistency of mother’s reaction with the child protagonist’s intentions, thus using moral intentionality as a template to evaluate fairness.

Bias in the perception of phonetic detail in children’s speech: A comparison of categorical and continuous rating scales

ABSTRACTPrevious research has shown that continuous rating scales can be used to assess phonetic detail in children’s productions, and could potentially be used to detect covert contrasts. Two experiments examined whether continuous rating scales have the additional benefit of being less susceptible to task-related biasing than categorical phonetic transcriptions. In both experiments, judgements of children’s productions of /s/ and /θ/ were interleaved with two types of rating tasks designed to induce bias: continuous judgements of a parameter whose variation is itself relatively more continuous (gender typicality of their speech) in one biasing condition, and categorical judgements of a parameter that is relatively less continuous (the vowel they produced) in the other biasing condition. One experiment elicited continuous judgements of /s/ and /θ/ productions, while the other elicited categorical judgements. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the influence of acoustic characteristics on continuous judgements of /s/ and /θ/ was stable across biasing conditions. In contrast, the results of Experiment 2 showed that the influence of acoustic characteristics on categorical judgements of /s/ and /θ/differed systematically across biasing conditions. These results suggest that continuous judgements are psychometrically superior to categorical judgements, as they are more resistant to task-related bias.