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Children's emotions and behaviors in response to infants' cries
Insights
Children
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychology
- Infant Behavior
Background:
- Infant crying is a primary communication method.
- Cries can evoke diverse emotional and behavioral responses in listeners.
- Reactions may range from caregiving to aggression.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine age-related variations in children's emotional and behavioral responses to infant cries.
- To assess children's reactions to both simulated and hypothetical infant distress.
- To investigate the influence of cry type (preterm vs. full-term) on children's responses.
Main Methods:
- Sixty children (preschool to preadolescence) listened to tape-recorded preterm and full-term infant cries.
- Children's emotional and behavioral responses were observed and self-reported.
- Interactions with a mother and infant were simulated.
- Interviews assessed children's empathy and helping intentions.
Main Results:
- Empathy, helping intentions, and helping behaviors were common across all ages.
- Prosocial behavioral interventions significantly increased with age.
- Negative emotional responses were inversely related to direct prosocial behaviors.
- Most children's responses were not affected by cry type (preterm vs. full-term).
Conclusions:
- Children demonstrate empathy and prosocial tendencies in response to infant cries.
- Prosocial behavior and direct intervention skills develop with age.
- While children can differentiate cries, the type of cry did not significantly alter their immediate emotional or behavioral reactions.
Abstract:
Infant crying can elicit in others both a range of emotions and contrasting behavioral reactions, such as altruistic caregiving versus aggression. Variations in reactions to young infants' cries were examined in 60 children ranging in age from late preschool to preadolescence. Each child over-heard either a preterm or a full-term tape-recorded cry from an adjacent room. Then a mother, carrying her infant, came looking for her (previously) "crying" infant's bottle. Later each child was interviewed after hearing a tape recording of a preterm and a full-term cry. Children's emotions and behaviors thus were assessed in response to simulated, real distresses and hypothetical representations of distress. Children's self-reports of empathy, their verbalized intentions to help, their actual helping responses, and observers' ratings of negative emotion were common responses to cries at all ages. In addition there were significant increases with age in prosocial, behavioral interventions. Expressions of negative emotion were inversely related to subsequent forms of prosocial behavior that required direct interaction with the infant. The emotions and behaviors of most children were not influenced by whether they heard preterm or full-term cries. They were, however, able to discriminate between such cries and some articulated "theories" about the impact of the cries on the listener.