Recent studies on prosocial behaviors have proposed that young children’s helping, sharing, and comforting behaviors are driven by particular social-cognitive skills that lead to successfully act towards another (Dunfield, 2014; Paulus, 2018). Because of such differences, it is important to understand whether and how these conducts differently rely on social cognition and language skills, which are all correlates of prosocial behaviors (Ensor et al., 2011; Girard et al., 2017; Imuta et al., 2017). Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language in the occurrence of helping, sharing, and comforting behaviors in 2- and 3-year-olds, while taking into account age and gender. Participants were 149 children (Mage = 35.6 months, SD = 6.77 months). A multitrait mixed-methods design was adopted, consisting of naturalistic observation of children’s spontaneous prosocial behaviors toward peers (Prosocial Behavior Observation Grid, developed ad hoc) and directly administered tasks to assess emotion knowledge (AKT by Denham, 1986), theory of mind (Diverse-Desire Task by Wellman & Liu, 2004; True-Belief Task by Wellman, 1991), and language (PPVT-R by Stella et al., 2000). Ordinal logistic regression analyses showed that emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language, together with age and gender, contributed to explaining helping and sharing behaviors according to different patterns: Emotion situation knowledge (b = 0.22, p = .006) and gender (b = −0.90, p = .027) mainly accounted for the occurrence of helping behaviors; theory of mind (b = 0.93, p = .036) and language (b = 0.042, p = .019) mainly contributed to explaining sharing behaviors. The present study adds key evidence to the recent literature on the independence of prosocial behaviors and their different associations with social cognition skills and language, supporting preventive interventions addressing young children’s positive behaviors.
Conte, E., Grazzani, I., Pepe, A. (2019). The determinants of helping and sharing behaviors: A study with toddlers and preschoolers.. In 19th European Conference on Developmental Psychology - Abstract Book (pp.486-486).
The determinants of helping and sharing behaviors: A study with toddlers and preschoolers.
Conte, E
;Grazzani, I;Pepe, A
2019
Abstract
Recent studies on prosocial behaviors have proposed that young children’s helping, sharing, and comforting behaviors are driven by particular social-cognitive skills that lead to successfully act towards another (Dunfield, 2014; Paulus, 2018). Because of such differences, it is important to understand whether and how these conducts differently rely on social cognition and language skills, which are all correlates of prosocial behaviors (Ensor et al., 2011; Girard et al., 2017; Imuta et al., 2017). Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language in the occurrence of helping, sharing, and comforting behaviors in 2- and 3-year-olds, while taking into account age and gender. Participants were 149 children (Mage = 35.6 months, SD = 6.77 months). A multitrait mixed-methods design was adopted, consisting of naturalistic observation of children’s spontaneous prosocial behaviors toward peers (Prosocial Behavior Observation Grid, developed ad hoc) and directly administered tasks to assess emotion knowledge (AKT by Denham, 1986), theory of mind (Diverse-Desire Task by Wellman & Liu, 2004; True-Belief Task by Wellman, 1991), and language (PPVT-R by Stella et al., 2000). Ordinal logistic regression analyses showed that emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language, together with age and gender, contributed to explaining helping and sharing behaviors according to different patterns: Emotion situation knowledge (b = 0.22, p = .006) and gender (b = −0.90, p = .027) mainly accounted for the occurrence of helping behaviors; theory of mind (b = 0.93, p = .036) and language (b = 0.042, p = .019) mainly contributed to explaining sharing behaviors. The present study adds key evidence to the recent literature on the independence of prosocial behaviors and their different associations with social cognition skills and language, supporting preventive interventions addressing young children’s positive behaviors.
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