The development of prosocial behaviors in young children: a prospective population-based cohort study

Researchers know relatively little about the normative development of children's behaviors aimed at alleviating distress or discomfort in others. In this article, the authors aim to describe the continuity and discontinuity in the degree to which young children in the general population are reported to exhibit specific prosocial behaviors. Data came from the Québec Longitudinal Study of Child Development. Consistent with Hay's model of prosocial development, the results show that there were about as many children who stopped exhibiting prosocial behaviors between 29 and 41 months of age as there were children who started doing so during this period. Further, gender differences (girls > boys) in prosocial behaviors are either emerging or at least increasing in magnitude, with girls being more likely to start and boys being more likely to stop exhibiting these behaviors between 29 and 41 months of age. Consistent with the early-onset hypothesis, children who exhibit prosocial behaviors at 17 months of age are less likely to stop exhibiting the same behaviors between 29 and 41 months of age. Otherwise, if they did not exhibit prosocial behaviors at 29 months of age, they are also more likely to start doing so in the following year.     

Attributing false beliefs about non-obvious properties at 18 months

Reports that infants in the second year of life can attribute false beliefs to others have all used a search paradigm in which an agent with a false belief about an object’s location searches for the object. The present research asked whether 18-month-olds would still demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with a novel non-search paradigm. An experimenter shook an object, demonstrating that it rattled, and then asked an agent, “Can you do it?” In response to this prompt, the agent selected one of two test objects. Infants realized that the agent could be led through inference (Experiment 1) or memory (Experiment 2) to hold a false belief about which of the two test objects rattled. These results suggest that 18-month-olds can attribute false beliefs about non-obvious properties to others, and can do so in a non-search paradigm. These and additional results (Experiment 3) help address several alternative interpretations of false-belief findings with infants.     

Patently controversial: markets,morals, and the President's proposal for embryonic stem cell research

This essay considers the implications of President George W. Bush's proposal for human embryonic stem cell research. Through the perspective of patent law, privacy, and informed consent, we elucidate the ongoing controversy about the moral standing of human embryonic stem cells and their derivatives and consider how the inconsistencies in the president's proposal will affect clinical practice and research.     

Can a self-propelled box have a goal? Psychological reasoning in 5-month-old infants

Some researchers have suggested that infants' ability to reason about goals develops as a result of their experiences with human agents and is then gradually extended to other agents. Other researchers have proposed that goal attribution is rooted in a specialized system of reasoning that is activated whenever infants encounter entities with appropriate features (e.g., self-propulsion). The first view predicts that young infants should attribute goals to human but not other agents; the second view predicts that young infants should attribute goals to both human and nonhuman agents. The present research revealed that 5-month-old infants (the youngest found thus far to attribute goals to human agents) also attribute goals to nonhuman agents. In two experiments, infants interpreted the actions of a self-propelled box as goal-directed. These results provide support for the view that from an early age, infants attribute goals to any entity they identify as an agent.     

The development of young infants' intuitions about support

Previous research has shown that 3-month-old infants, like adults, expect a box to be stable when it is in full contact with a platform, and to fall when it loses all contact with the platform. Do young infants also have expectations about what should happen when the box is only in partial contact with the platform? The present research was designed to address this question. In Experiment 1, 6.5-month-old infants saw two test events: a full-contact and a partial-contact test event. In both events, the infants watched the extended finger of a gloved hand push a box along the top of a platform. In the full-contact event, the box was pushed until its leading edge reached the end of the platform. In the partial-contact event, the box was pushed until only 15% or 70% of its bottom surface remained on the platform. The infants looked reliably longer at the partial-than at the full-contact event when 15%, but not 70%, of the box rested on the platform. These results suggested that the infants were able to judge how much contact was needed between the box and the platform for the box to be stable. A control condition provided evidence for this interpretation. In Experiment 2, 5.5- to 6-month-old infants were found to look equally at the full- and the partial-contact events, even when only 15% of the box's bottom surface remained on the platform. This result suggested that prior to 6.5 months of age infants perceive any amount of contact between the box and the platform to be sufficient to ensure the box's stability. Interpretations of this developmental sequence are considered in the Conclusion.