Is it okay to tell? Children's judgements about information disclosure

The present research investigates how young children evaluate and reason about the disclosure of private information. Using story vignettes, children aged 4–5 and 7–8 years were asked to evaluate an individual who passed on information from a peer revealing that he or she had broken a rule (e.g., stolen a cookie; rule type) or lacked a skill (e.g., could not ride a bicycle; competence type). These negative valence stories were compared with positive valence stories in which the peer had followed a rule or possessed a skill. Younger children approved the sharing of positive, but not negative, information, irrespective of type (rule vs. competence). Older children disapproved the disclosure of someone's incompetence, whereas they approved the disclosure of a rule violation. Children justified their evaluations by reference to social rules in the rule‐type vignettes and to an individual's feelings in the competence‐type vignettes. The findings suggest that young children are concerned about the disclosure of negative information about other people, but with age they become increasingly concerned about protecting the social order even at the cost of individual privacy.     

Bedeutung,Gegenstandsbeziehing und Sinn im Sprachmimischen Zeichensystem

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Avatar‐Mediated Networking: Increasing Social Presence and Interpersonal Trust in Net‐Based Collaborations

This study analyzes the influence of avatars on social presence, interpersonal trust, perceived communication quality, nonverbal behavior, and visual attention in Net‐based collaborations using a comparative approach. A real‐time communication window including a special avatar interface was integrated into a shared collaborative workspace. Communication modes under investigation were text chat, audio, audio–video, and avatar. Significant differences were found between text chat and all other communication modalities in perceived intimateness, co‐presence, and emotionally‐based trust. Microanalyses of nonverbal activity and visual attention point to similarities between video and avatar modes, both showing higher levels of exposure to the virtual other and visual attention, in particular in the initial phase of interaction as compared to text and audio.     

Young children's understanding of the context‐relativity of normative rules in conventional games

We investigated young children's awareness of the context‐relative rule structure of simple games. Two contexts were established in the form of spatial locations. Familiar objects were used in their conventional way at location 1, but acquired specific functions in a rule game at location 2. A third party then performed the conventional act at either of the two locations, constituting a mistake at location 2 (experimental condition), but appropriate at location 1 (control condition). Three‐year‐olds (but not 2‐year‐olds) systematically distinguished the two conditions, spontaneously intervening with normative protest against the third party act in the experimental, but not in the control condition. Young children thus understand context‐specific rules even when the context marking is non‐linguistic. These results are discussed in the broader context of the development of social cognition and cultural learning.     

The colour spectrum of lies

In this reply to Ceci, Burd, and Helm, we discuss future directions for developmental research to (1) study the motivations underlying white lies and (2) how to classify lies that reflect other‐regard and self‐interest simultaneously.