The Cradle of Compassion: Early Development of Prosocial Behavior

描述(由申请人提供)：亲社会行为是个人幸福和健康的心理、社会和身体发展的核心方面。拟议项目的目的是通过明确生长模式并测试在生命第二年和第三年亲社会反应首次出现时促进其发展的具体机制，来促进我们对这一重要行为早期发展的有限理解。对早期亲社会反应的更好理解有望识别自闭症等发育障碍的早期标记物，从而允许更早的干预努力，并促进表现出高度攻击性和外化行为的幼儿的长期积极适应。这项拟议的研究有三个目标：1)绘制12至30个月大的亲社会分享与成人沟通支持和分享接受者之间的发展历程；2)确定亲社会分享发展的两个潜在机制：发展社会理解和母亲与孩子谈论他人心理状态；3)确定幼儿社会理解的发展是否在母亲谈论心理状态对儿童分享倾向发展的影响中起中介作用。采用互补的横断面和纵向设计，一套标准的分享任务将在7个月(12、15、18、21、24、27和30个月)的每个年龄段被实施给40-120名儿童，其中母亲或女性实验者是潜在的接受者。所有的任务都是相似的，因为孩子拥有过多的物质资源(例如，汽车、堆积环)，而游戏伙伴和潜在的分享接受者没有。伴侣将提供一系列关于她的需要和愿望的分级提示，最终将以公开的要求结束。孩子们将根据他们是否分享以及如果分享，在一系列线索中的哪个点进行评分。他们还将被执行一系列任务，以索引早期社会理解的三个概念上相关的方面：自我他人理解、情绪理解和所有权理解。最后，在纵向样本中，父母将向孩子朗读无字图画书，这些图画书描述了孩子的各种情绪和其他内容，父母的情绪和心理谈话将从这些内容转录出来。分析将确定主要结构(分享；社会理解；父母的精神状态谈话)的年龄差异。他们还将确定分享与社会理解之间、分享与父母精神状态谈话之间、年龄和控制变量(如家庭人口统计特征、性别、气质、亲子关系质量和子女顺从性)之间的同步和预测性关联。最后，他们将讨论社会理解的差异是否会调节母亲的情绪和心理谈话对发展亲社会行为的影响。基于对亲社会行为、社会理解和父母心理状态话语早期发展的小型但有趣的研究的独特整合，并使用新的任务和程序，拟议的项目将构成第一个系统的、可控的、关于分享的产生和早期发展及其与发展社会理解的关系的实验研究；第一个关于这个年龄段的分享的社会化相关性的检验；以及第一个确定幼儿的社会理解是否以及如何调节社会化对亲社会行为的影响的研究。 公共卫生相关性：亲社会行为是个人福祉和健康发展的核心方面。尽管最近的许多研究都探讨了反社会行为的起源和早期发展，但对它的补充，亲社会行为的起源却知之甚少。随着对亲社会行为和特定社会化影响的早期发展有了更深入的了解，我们可以开始了解在自闭症等鲜为人知的发育障碍中可能出现的问题；为有可能加剧攻击性的幼儿提供预防性干预；为父母和教育工作者提供必要的知识，帮助幼儿变得更加亲社会，并促进长期健康。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prosocial behavior is a core aspect of individuals' well-being and healthy psychosocial and physical development. The purpose of the proposed project is to advance our limited understanding of the early development of this important behavior by specifying patterns of growth and testing specific mechanisms contributing to its development in the second and third years of life when prosocial responses first emerge. Better understanding of early prosocial responsiveness holds promise for identifying early markers for developmental disorders like autism which would permit earlier intervention efforts, and for promoting long-term positive adjustment in very young children who exhibit heightened aggression and externalizing behavior. The proposed research has three aims: 1) to map the developmental course of prosocial sharing between 12 and 30 months of age in relation to adults' communicative support and the sharing recipient; 2) to determine how two potential underlying mechanisms relate to the growth of prosocial sharing: developing social understanding, and mothers' talk with their children about others' mental states; 3) to determine whether young children's developing social understanding mediates the effects of mothers' talk about mental states on children's developing propensity to share. Using complementary cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, a standard set of sharing tasks will be administered to 40 - 120 children at each of 7 ages (12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, and 30 months), with either mother or a female experimenter as potential recipient. All tasks are similar in that the child has an overabundance of a material resource (e.g., cars, stacking rings) while the play partner and potential sharing recipient has none. The partner will provide a graded series of cues as to her need and desire, which will culminate in an overt request. Children will be scored for whether they share or not and if so, at what point in the series of cues. They will also be administered a series of tasks to index three conceptually related aspects of early social understanding: self-other understanding, emotion understanding, and ownership understanding. Finally, in the longitudinal sample, parents will read wordless picture books to their children which depict various emotions along with other content; parents' emotion and mental state talk will be transcribed from these. Analyses will identify age differences in the primary constructs (sharing; social understanding; parents' mental state talk). They will also identify concurrent and predictive associations between sharing and social understanding, and between sharing and parent mental state talk, above and beyond age and control variables such as family demographic characteristics, gender, temperament, parent-child relationship quality, and child compliance. Finally, they will address whether differences in social understanding mediate the effects of mothers' emotion and mental state talk on developing prosocial behavior. Based on a unique integration of the small but intriguing research on early developments in prosocial behavior, social understanding, and parents' mental state discourse, and using novel tasks and procedures, the proposed project will constitute the first systematic, controlled, experimental study of the emergence and early development of sharing and its relation to developing social understanding; the first examination of socialization correlates of sharing in this age period; and the first to determine whether and how social understanding in very young children mediates socialization effects on prosocial behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Prosocial behavior is a core aspect of individuals' well-being and healthy development. Although much recent research has addressed the origins and early development of antisocial behavior, little is known about its complement, the origins of prosocial behavior. With greater understanding of early developments in prosocial behavior and specific socialization influences, we can begin to understand what may go awry in poorly understood developmental disorders like autism; inform preventive interventions for young children at risk for heightened aggression; and provide parents and educators with the requisite knowledge to help young children become more prosocial and to promote long-term health.