Young Children's Attributions Research Articles

Understanding of Goals, Beliefs, and Desires Predicts Morally Relevant Theory of Mind: A Longitudinal Investigation.

Developmental continuity between infants' understanding of intentional agency (goals, beliefs, and desires) and young children's attributions of moral intentions were studied in a 4-year longitudinal study (N=77 children). First, goal encoding at the age of 7months and implicit false belief understanding at 18months were predictive of children's understanding of an accidental transgressor's moral intentions at the age of 5years. Second, 24-month-olds' understanding of subjective desires was predictive of children's ability to understand an accidental transgressor's false belief at 5years. These correlations remained significant when controlling for gender and verbal IQ. These findings support the theory that an early understanding of intentional agency is foundational for moral cognition in childhood.

Associations between young children's emotion attributions and prediction of outcome in differing social situations

Associations between young children's attributions of emotion at different points in a story, and with regard to their own prediction about the story's outcome, were investigated using two hypothetical scenarios of social and emotional challenge (social entry and negative event). First grade children (N = 250) showed an understanding that emotions are tied to situational cues by varying the emotions they attributed both between and within scenarios. Furthermore, emotions attributed to the main protagonist at the beginning of the scenarios were differentially associated with children's prediction of a positive or negative outcome and with the valence of the emotion attributed at the end of the scenario. Gender differences in responses to some items were also found.

The influence of movement and outcome on young children's attributions of intention

Two studies investigated preschoolers’ ability to infer an actor's intended goal based upon the perceptual properties of the actor's movement. Scenes were presented showing a computer‐generated display in which a circle persistently jumped and rebounded off wall. One of three outcomes occurred: the acting circle reached its target, it reached an outcome opposite the target of its persistent movement (non‐goal condition), or it reached neither target. Children accurately inferred the acting circle's goal in Expt 1 except for the 3‐year‐olds in the non‐goal condition. Experiment 2 modified the non‐goal condition so that the passive movements were not increasingly closer to the non‐goal, resulting in above‐chance performance for both age groups (p < .01). Taken together, these findings suggest that by age 3 children will account for how an actor is moving when identifying its intended goal and will then distinguish the inferred goal from the eventual outcome of the act. Implications of these findings for the relation between outward features of motion and the development of mental concepts are discussed.

Effects of Gender Constancy and Figure's Height and Sex on Young Children's Gender-Typed Attributions

Young children's attributions of gender-typed activities to figures/models differing in height and/or sex were examined over three experiments. The influence of gender constancy understanding on children's gender-typed attributions was also examined. In Experiment 1, young children attributed significantly more masculine activities to male than female figures and significantly more feminine activities to female than male figures. Experiment 2 confirmed the results demonstrated in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, additional line-drawn stimuli and figure comparisons were incorporated; participants attributed significantly more masculine activities to taller than shorter male figures and taller than shorter female figures. In addition, children attributed significantly more feminine activities to taller than shorter female figures. In Experiment 3, participants viewed pictures of taller and shorter male and female models. Results confirmed those of Experiment 1, as well as most of those of Experiment 2. No consistent patterns of children's gender-typed attributions as a function of gender constancy understanding emerged in the three experiments. Results are discussed as they apply to unexplored tenets from Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental model, as well as those of gender schema models, of early gender role development.

Children's attributions of moral emotions to victimizers: Some data, doubts and suggestions

The main goal of this research was to re‐examine contradictions between several published studies of age‐related changes in children's attributions of moral emotions to transgressors, and to analyse the robustness of young children's tendency to fall into the happy victimizer pattern (is. to expect a wrongdoer to feel good rather than bad after having committed n certain moral transgression). Ninety children of three age levels (ie. 4‐, 6‐ and 8‐year‐olds) were first confronted with two stories involving a wrongdoer, and then judged how the story's character felt. Next, the children were presented with additional opportunities designed to lessen the incidence of young children's attributions of positive (is. immoral) emotions to the victimizer. Although a developmental trend from positive to negative emotions was evident, children at all ages were more likely to attribute positive rather than negative emotions to the victimizer. However, older children changed their initial attributions of positive feelings into negative emotions more often than did younger children. These results are discussed in comparison with the findings of related studies, and also in relation to theoretical accounts of young children's morality.

Young children's attributions of knowledge when speaker intent and listener access conflict

Three experiments assessed children's attributions of knowledge to a listener when a speaker's intent for a message to be heard either conflicted or coincided with a listener's perceptual access to the message. When speaker intent and listener access coincided, both 3‐year‐olds and 5‐year‐olds correctly attributed knowledge to the listener. However, performance between the two groups diverged when access and intent conflicted, with only 5‐year‐olds consistently attributing knowledge on the basis of access alone. These results suggest that 3‐year‐olds do not yet fully distinguish the intent to inform from the actual informativeness of a message. For older children, the intent to be heard is secondary to perceptual access in judgments of listener comprehension because listener access to a message is regarded as a necessary precondition for being informed by that message.

Young children's causal attributions for success and failure: ‘Self‐enhancing’ boys and ‘self‐derogating’ girls

This study examined the types of causal attributions young children make for their own success and failure at performance tasks. The results showed that young children's attributions are different from those subsumed under adult models and that there were significant sex, but not ethnic, differences in the attributional styles employed. Boys exhibited a ‘self‐enhancing’ pattern of attributions, whereas girls' attributions were ‘self‐derogating’.

Young Children's Attribution of Action to Beliefs and Desires

When and how children understand beliefs and desires is central to whether they are ever childhood realists and when they evidence a theory of mind. Adults typically construe human action as resulting from an actor's beliefs and desires, a mentalistic interpretation that represents a common and fundamental form of psychological explanation. We investigated children's ability to do likewise. In Experiment 1, 60 subjects were asked to explain why story characters performed simple actions, such as looking under a piano for a kitten. Both preschoolers and adults gave predominantly psychological explanations, attributing the actions to the actor's beliefs and desires. Even 3-year-olds attributed actions to beliefs and false beliefs, demonstrating an understanding of belief not evident in previous research. In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds were tested further on their understanding of false belief. They were given both false belief prediction and explanation tasks. Children performed well on explanation taks, attributing an anomalous action to the actor's false belief, even when they failed to predict correctly what action would follow from a false belief. We concluded that 3-year-olds and adults share a fundamentally similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs and desires, even false beliefs.

Young Children's Attribution of Action to Beliefs and Desires

When and how children understand beliefs and desires is central to whether they are ever childhood realists and when they evidence a theory of mind. Adults typically construe human action as resulting from an actor's beliefs and desires, a mentalistic interpretation that represents a common and fundamental form of psychological explanation. We investigated children's ability to do likewise. In Experiment 1, 60 subjects were asked to explain why story characters performed simple actions, such as looking under a piano for a kitten. Both preschoolers and adults gave predominantly psychological explanations, attributing the actions to the actor's beliefs and desires. Even 3-year-olds attributed actions to beliefs and false beliefs, demonstrating an understanding of belief not evident in previous research. In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds were tested further on their understanding of false belief. They were given both false belief prediction and explanation tasks. Children performed well on explanation taks, attributing an anomalous action to the actor's false belief, even when they failed to predict correctly what action would follow from a false belief. We concluded that 3-year-olds and adults share a fundamentally similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs and desires, even false beliefs.

Young Children's Attribution of Intentionality to Themselves and Others

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.

Young Children's Attribution of Intentionality to Themselves and Others

Young Children's Attribution of Intentionality to Themselves and Others