Children's perceptions and comforting strategies to infant crying: Relations to age,sex, and empathy‐related responding

This study aimed to examine child characteristics associated with the understanding of and responses to infant crying. Seven hundred and twenty‐four 1st to 7th grade children (383 boys, 341 girls) were shown a picture depicting a crying infant, whereupon they were asked to generate the potential causes for infant crying along with the action responses that they might utilize to assist a crying baby. Self‐reports of children's empathy‐related responding were also obtained. As hypothesized, an age‐related increase in the number, variety, and quality for causes for infant crying and strategies to help a crying infant were observed. Girls generated a higher mean number and variety of causes compared to boys. For older children (grades 4–7), dimensions of empathy‐related responding, namely sympathy and perspective taking, were significantly associated with the number and variety of causes for infant crying and caregiving strategies. The findings support the conclusion for a developmental progression of understanding of facial expressions of infant crying across middle childhood.