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Preschool children were given training in helping behavior. They were assigned to a control group or to play groups in which an adult caretaker, over a period of several weeks, provided either high-nurturant or lownurturant conditions. In a series of training sessions, the nurturant or nonnurturant adult modeled sympathetic helping. For a part of the sample, a symbolic medium was used for training; for the rest of the sample, symbolic and behavioral situations of distress were used. Training effects were measured 2 days later, and 2 weeks later. Children's recall of the experiment and their concept of helping were measured 6 months later. Children in the main study were upper-middle class in origin. Part of the study was repeated with children from low economic backgrounds. Symbolic altruism was significantly increased in all experimental groups and was unaffected by the nurturance variations in the adult. Altruistic behavior measured in nonpressured and realistic encounters with distress was increased by the model's nurturance. Children with nurturant caretakers who had modeled helping in both symbolic and live distress gave more help, verbalized more sympathy, and were more consistent in their altruism. The partial replication of procedures with a second sample showed effects of training similar to the first study. Young children's potentialities for altruistic behavior are quite unknown. Concerning their propensities for understanding the feel-

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