Children's understanding of personal dispositions and its relationship to behavior

Valence Effects in Reasoning about Evaluative Traits

“…This type of cross-situational inference has been linked to children's functioning within academic and social situations. Rholes et al (1988) found that among 7-and 8-year-olds who tended to make such crosssituational inferences, initial performance on a puzzle task had a particularly strong influence on their subsequent persistence. Camhy and Ruble (1994) found that 7-to 9-year-olds who tended to make cross-situational inferences expressed particular interest in gathering traitrelated information about an unfamiliar peer when they expected to interact with him or her.…”

“…An understanding of children's trait conceptions can lead to important insights into the way children acquire an understanding of human mental life. The nature of children's trait conceptions is also thought to have important implications for their social and motivational development (Camhy & Ruble, 1994;Dweck, 1999;Grusec & Redler, 1980;Heyman & Dweck, 1998;Heyman, Dweck, & Cain, 1992;Nicholls, 1978;Rholes, Jones, & Wade, 1988;Stevenson et al, 1990; see also Dweck &Leggett, 1988, andRholes, Newman, &Ruble, 1990). For example, the belief that important traits are fixed or stable is associated with a tendency to deemphasize processes that are likely to lead to the development of academic and social skills (Cain & Dweck, 1995;Erdley, Cain, Loomis, Dumas-Hines, & Dweck, 1997;Heyman & Dweck, 1998; see Dweck, 1999).…”

“…Although the inference criterion is often related to beliefs about the malleability and stability of traits, it is conceptually distinct in that it refers not to general beliefs about the nature of human characteristics, but to the act of using situation-specific information to draw trait inferences (see Dweck, 1999). Children's readiness to make such inferences can be examined by asking children whether they would infer a specific trait in a specific context (Aloise, 1993;Heyman & Gelman, 1999).Measures of the cross-situational consistency of trait-relevant behavior (Camhy & Ruble, 1994;Heller & Berndt, 1981;Rholes et al, 1988;Rholes & Ruble, 1984) can also be viewed as indices of children's inference criterion. When participants report that they expect crosssituational consistency, it offers indirect evidence that they have used the provided behavioral information to infer the trait in question (see Rholes & Ruble, 1984).…”

The Early Childhood Generalized Trust Belief Scale

“…Second, the loadings may reflect the children's person-perception abilities. Previous research has demonstrated that young children do not expect an individual who has behaved in a certain way in the past to continue to do so in the future (Heller & Berndt, 1981;Heyman & Gelman, 2000;Kalish, 2002;Rholes et al, 1988). Therefore, it may be that some early school-age children are unable to generalize from past experiences to future hypothetical scenarios when completing the ECGTBS and this could influence the ECGTBS' psychometric properties.…”

“…First, the scenarios and interactions described in the items of the CGTBS were modified and simplified for early school-age children so that they were age-appropriate, something which Bernath and Feshbach (1995) argue is particularly important when assessing generalized trust. Second, compared to older children and adults, early school-age children are less able to infer from an individual's previous actions how they will behave in the future (Alvarez, Ruble, & Bolger, 2001;Barenboim, 1981;Heller & Brendt, 1981;Kalish, 2002;Rholes, Jones, & Wade, 1988 To address these issues, the present research aimed to develop an age-appropriate measure of early school-age children's generalized trust through using the aggregate of item-pairs to assess the underlying factors of generalized trust. This procedure has been successfully used in the CGTBS with 9-to 11-year-olds .…”