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Toddlers map the word 'good' to helping agents, but not to fair distributors
Laura Franchin1, Federica Savazzi2, Isabel Cristina Neira-Gutierrez1
1Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences,University of Trento,Italy.
Insights
By 30 months, toddlers associate "good" with helpfulness but not fairness. They prefer fair distributors when asked to choose, indicating developing socio-moral understanding.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Moral Development
Background:
- Children's understanding of abstract concepts like 'good' evolves over time.
- Early moral reasoning is crucial for social development.
- The precise age at which children link 'good' to moral concepts is not well-defined.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate when toddlers (20 and 30 months) begin to associate the adjective 'good' with moral concepts.
- To examine toddlers' understanding of 'good' in relation to helping versus fairness.
Main Methods:
- Participants viewed computer animations depicting helpful/hindering agents and fair/unfair distributions.
- Children were asked to identify the 'good one' and then to 'pick one'.
Main Results:
- Thirty-month-olds associated 'good' with helpful agents, not fair distributors.
- When prompted to choose, 30-month-olds selected the fair distributor.
- Twenty-month-olds' responses did not show a clear understanding of 'good' in these contexts.
Conclusions:
- By 30 months, toddlers begin mapping 'good' to prosocial behaviors like helping.
- Toddlers at this age do not yet consistently link 'good' to fairness in distributive actions.
- This suggests a nuanced development of moral understanding in early childhood.
Abstract:
Infants begin to understand some of the meanings of the adjective good at around thirteen months, but it is not clear when they start to map it to concepts in the moral domain. We investigated infants' and toddlers' knowledge of good in the domains of help and fairness. Participants at 20 and 30 months were shown computer animations involving helpful and hindering agents, or agents who performed fair or unfair distributions, and were asked to "pick the good one". Toddlers at 30 months took good as referring to helping, but not to the fair agents. However, when asked "to pick one", they choose the fair distributor. These findings suggest that by 30 months toddlers have started to map good to some socio-moral features, such as a helping disposition, but not to fairness in distributive actions.