Young children’s protest: what it can (not) tell us about early normative understanding

Abstract

In this paper we address the question how children come to understand normativity through simple forms of social interaction. A recent line of research suggests that even very young children can understand social norms quite independently of any moral context. We focus on a methodological procedure developed by Rakoczy et al., Developmental Psychology, 44(3), 875-881, (2008) that measures children's protest behaviour when a pre-established constitutive rule has been violated. Children seem to protest when they realize that rule violations are not allowed or should not have happened. We point out that there is more than one possible explanation for children's reactions in these studies. They could be due to (1) disobeying an authority, (2) an inability to follow a rule, or (3) the violation of an empirical expectation due to the mismatch between statement and action. We thus question whether it would still count as an indicator for normative understanding if children responded to aspects of the game other than the violation of a constitutive rule and conclude that the protesting behavior, when taken in isolation, does not suffice as evidence for normative understanding.

Neural computations in children’s third-party interventions are modulated by their parents’ moral values

“…Moreover, the transgressor was not an acquaintance of the child, and the book was said to belong to a university (not a child’s school nor researchers), hence giving little sense of in-group/out-group membership 11 , 60 . Also, the participating children would likely attribute ‘power’ and ‘authority’ to the visitor/transgressor, as an adult 26 . Nevertheless, in the real-life experimental context, 34.8% of children explicitly protested to the adult wrong-doer.…”

“…Also, due to the small sample size, analysis of ERP components, particularly the analysis of Protester group, were underpowered. Also, the participating children might have attributed ‘power’ and ‘authority’ to the adult transgressor 26 , preventing them from protesting and reporting even though they might have done so with a peer. Nevertheless, the findings from this data suggest potential avenues for future studies.…”

“…However, whether and how children’s nascent understanding of social norms actually drives their costly intervention behaviours, cannot be understood by studying the behaviours of interest alone. Rather these need to be examined in conjunction with other independent measures 26 , 27 . Therefore, in this study, data from three independent sources were triangulated, namely: (a) electroencephalography (EEG), (b) young children’s behaviours recorded when involved in a transgression experiment and, (c) reports provided by the parents of the participating children of their child’s social and emotional dispositions.…”

“…1 ) comprises child-friendly visual scenarios depicting two characters intentionally performing either harming actions or helping actions 35 , 41 . As noted earlier, existing experimental paradigms have mostly relied on observing children’s overt behaviours or verbal responses, which are important yet limited in informing on how children’s implicit normative evaluation actually drives their costly intervention behaviours 26 . Meanwhile, neurodevelopmental studies, using EEG/ERP recordings, can contribute in elucidating the neural mechanisms that subserve attentional and affective processes initiated by the perception of norm violations, enabling us to understand how third-party costly intervention may be mediated by implicit moral evaluation during the early ontogeny of moral development 56 , 57 .…”

How to Dax? Preschool Children’s Prosocial Behavior, But Not Their Social Norm Enforcement Relates to Their Peer Status

“…That is, children’s enforcement of social norms may not need to be based on we-intentionality and group-mindedness ( Tomasello, 2014 ), but on other mechanisms such as social interaction experiences or domain knowledge (e.g., Piaget, 1932/1965 ; Turiel, 2002 ). Third, one could also wonder whether children’s protest in these game-like activities does actually constitute sufficient indicators for normative understanding ( Brandl et al, 2015 ). Indeed, recent work is suggestive of a dissociation between spontaneous measure of normativity such as protest and children’s more reflected normative judgments when assessing their reflected verbal evaluation of another’s action ( Wörle and Paulus, 2017 ).…”