Young Children's Judgments Research Articles

Normative Social Role Concepts in Early Childhood.

The current studies (N=255, children ages 4-5 and adults) explore patterns of age-related continuity and change in conceptual representations of social role categories (e.g., "scientist"). In Study 1, young children's judgments of category membership were shaped by both category labels and category-normative traits, and the two were dissociable, indicating that even young children's conceptual representations for some social categories have a "dual character." In Study 2, when labels and traits were contrasted, adults and children based their category-based induction decisions on category-normative traits rather than labels. Study 3 confirmed that children reason based on category-normative traits because they view them as an obligatory part of category membership. In contrast, adults in this study viewed the category-normative traits as informative on their own (not only as a cue to obligations). Implications for continuity and change in representations of social role categories will be discussed.

Acting Intentionally and the Side-Effect Effect

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where theory of mind and moral judgment meet. Preschool children's judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side effect is brought about "on purpose" when the side effect itself is morally bad, but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of whether something was done on purpose (as opposed to judgments of purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentionality are usually assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative-even in preschoolers-challenges current understanding. Young children's judgments regarding foreseen side effects depend on whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the theory-of-mind concept "not care that P," children show the side-effect effect.

Young Children's Judgments Aboutthe Relative Size of Shared Portions:The Role of Material Type

3 experiments were conducted to assess young (5-7 years) children's ability to judge the relative amount that a character would receive if sharing a material with 1 friend (halves) or 2 friends (thirds). Materials included items that appeared in 3 forms: continuous, discrete, and composite. In the first 2 experiments, performance was best with materials in composite form and worst with materials in continuous form. In a third experiment, children performed as well with large unorganized sets as with small organized sets, suggesting that they were not using a counting strategy. The results support suggestions that children enter school with informal knowledge about partitioning that may serve as a foundation for instruction in fractions concepts.

The effects of elapsed time and retrieval on young children's judgments of the temporal distances of past events

Young children have very limited knowledge of long-term time patterns, but recent studies show that impressions of temporal distances provide them with some sense of the times of past events. These studies were investigations of (a) the function relating subjective to objective distances in the past for events whose ages range from less than 1 month to 1 year and (b) the effects of retrieving events on their subjective recency. In Study 1, 825 children (5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds) compared the recency of two school events from many months in the past shortly after one of the events was retrieved. In Study 2, 162 children (mean age 4.9 years) judged the distances in the past of their birthdays, summer, and 4 holidays by placing cards on a spatial continuum. In Study 3, 148 children (mean age 4.8 years) performed a similar task after the prior retrieval or priming of some of the events. Subjective temporal distance increased with real distance up to about 5 months, with no evident increase thereafter. Retrieval and priming had no effect on subjective recency. These findings show that early developing characteristics of memory provide young children with a differentiated sense of the times of events from past months. However, simple strength models cannot explain this ability.

Young children's judgments of relative mass of two objects in a head-on-collision event.

The purpose in this study was to investigate the ability of young children to judge the relative mass of two objects depicted on a CRT monitor as colliding head-on with each other, and to determine which feature of a collision event they depend on for their judgments. In the first experiment it was shown that half of the 4-year-olds and most of the 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds consistently judged the slower object to be heavier when the velocities of the two objects before collision were the same and those after collision were different. In the second experiment young children's judgements of relative mass in noncollision events in which two objects only moved in opposite directions at different speeds were examined. Results showed that half of the 5-year-olds and most of the 6-year-olds tended to assume consistently that the slower object was heavier. However, the 4-year-olds did not show any clear tendency. The third experiment was planned to examine young children's judgments of relative mass in different collision events in which only the precollision velocities of two colliding objects were different: half of the 6-year-old children judged the slower object to be heavier, but the rest of them and half of the 5-year-old children consistently gave the opposite responses. These were based upon the delay between the starts of motion of the two objects. The 4-year-olds did not show any tendency, as in experiment 2. The results indicate that young children can specify the kinetic information about relative mass from the kinematics of collision events when viewing an appropriate collision event, and that both the precollision phase and the postcollision phase contribute to the judgement of relative mass.

Does Day-care Experience Affect Young Children's Judgments of Home and School Rules?

The current study was designed to determine whether children's ability to distinguish moral rules from conventional school-based rules, and conventional home- based rules was affected by the amount of experience they had in day-care. Preschoolers (N = 42), ranging in age from 35 to 61 months, were interviewed about: (1) the legitimacy of authority to abolish a rule, (2) the accept- ability of behaviors that were permitted by an authority, and (3) the seriousness of behaviors that were prohibited by an authority. The results revealed that previous day-care experience did not affect children's judgments. Moral events were distinguished from conventional events on all questions. In addition, home-based conventional events were distinguished from school-based conventional events suggesting that children consider the social context in which conventional events occur.

The down side of help: An attributional-developmental analysis of helping behavior as a low-ability cue.

Two studies examined the possibility that unsolicited help can function as a low-ability cue. In Experiment 1, children 5-12 years old viewed videotaped teaching sessions depicting two boys working on a set of math problems. One boy received assistance from a help giver (teacher or peer); the other received no such help. Participants then judged both students' ability and effort. In Experiment 2, children 4-12 years old viewed one videotape and then made inferences about the attributions, affects, and expectancies of the students. They also indicated which of the two they would prefer as a workmate. All children except 4-5-year-olds in Experiment 2 inferred that the helped student was lower in ability than his nonhelped counterpart. Age-related differences in young children's judgments about affects, expectancies, and preferred work mate showed the same developmental pattern. The implications of these findings for the development of attributional understanding and for communicating low ability in the classroom are discussed.

Children's judgments of numerical quantity: A new view of early quantification

Three experiments investigated the role of length, density, and number dimensions in children's numerosity judgments of linear arrays of beads. The number dimension is physically defined by a length × density rule. Judgments based, even in part, on the number dimension would show signs of a length × density rule. Experiment 1 examined numerosity judgments of large arrays. Results showed that judgments by 3- and 4-year-olds obeyed a length + density rule, providing cogent evidence for a general adding strategy in young children's judgments of quantity. The physical length × density rule emerged gradually with increasing age. Experiment 2 showed that numerosity judgments of small arrays by 3- and 4-year-olds obeyed a length × density rule, indicating response to the number dimension. This result was expected and thereby validated the linearity of the response scale at the youngest ages. Experiment 3 verified the integration rules for individual 3- and 4-year-olds. The integration rules were interpreted in terms of Piaget's stages of the development of quantification. No evidence for Piaget's initial stage was found. This leads to a new view of early quantification which grants young children the ability to integrate stimulus dimensions.

Bases of young children's judgments about more

While the young child's difficulties in correctly comprehending the term less are well known, it appears less widely recognized that young children may also encounter difficulties with the term more. The present study shows that in a task which requires judgments about more to be based on the relative numerosity of sets, 3–4-year-old children may base their judgments on other parameters, such as the extent to which the sets are homogenous with respect to the color of their components. The implications of such findings are briefly considered.