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| Publications of Margarita L. Svetlova :chronological alphabetical combined listing:%% Journal Articles @article{fds349357, Author = {Corbit, J and Callaghan, T and Svetlova, M}, Title = {Toddlers' costly helping in three societies.}, Journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology}, Volume = {195}, Pages = {104841}, Year = {2020}, Month = {July}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104841}, Abstract = {Over the second and third years of life, toddlers begin to engage in helping even when it comes at a personal cost. During this same period, toddlers gain experience of ownership, which may influence their tendency to help at a cost. Whereas costly helping has been studied in Western children, who have ample access to resources, the emergence of costly helping has not been examined in societies where children's experience with ownership is varied and access to resources is scarce. The current study compared the development of toddlers' costly and non-costly helping in three societies within Canada, India, and Peru that differ in these aspects of children's early social experience. In two conditions, 16- to 36-month-olds (N = 100) helped an experimenter by giving either their own items (Costly condition) or the experimenter's items (Non-costly condition). Children's tendency to help increased with age in the Non-costly condition across all three societies. In the Costly condition, in Canada children's tendency to help increased with age, in Peru children's helping remained stable across age, and in India children's level of helping decreased with age. Thus, whereas we replicate the findings that non-costly helping appears to develop synchronously across diverse societies, costly helping may depend on children's early society-specific experiences. We discuss these findings in relation to children's early ownership experience and access to resources, factors that may account for the divergent patterns in the development of costly helping across these societies.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104841}, Key = {fds349357} } @article{fds345319, Author = {Kachel, U and Svetlova, M and Tomasello, M}, Title = {Three- and 5-year-old children's understanding of how to dissolve a joint commitment.}, Journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology}, Volume = {184}, Pages = {34-47}, Year = {2019}, Month = {August}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.03.008}, Abstract = {When young children form a joint commitment with a partner, they understand that this agreement generates obligations. In this study, we investigated whether young children understand that joint commitments, and their associated obligations, may likewise be dissolved by agreement. The participants (3- and 5-year-olds; N = 144) formed a joint commitment with a puppet to play a collaborative game. In one condition, the puppet asked permission to break off and the children agreed; in a second condition, the puppet notified the children of his or her leaving; and in a third condition, the puppet just left abruptly. Children at both ages protested more and waited longer for the puppet's return (and said that the puppet deserved scolding and no prize at the end) when the puppet left abruptly than in the other two conditions (with "asking permission" leading to the least protest of all). Overall, 3-year-olds protested more, and waited longer for the partner's return, than 5-year-olds. Preschool children understand that the obligations of a joint commitment may be dissolved by agreement or, to a lesser degree, by notification.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2019.03.008}, Key = {fds345319} } @article{fds326699, Author = {Kachel, U and Svetlova, M and Tomasello, M}, Title = {Three-Year-Olds' Reactions to a Partner's Failure to Perform Her Role in a Joint Commitment.}, Journal = {Child Development}, Volume = {89}, Number = {5}, Pages = {1691-1703}, Year = {2018}, Month = {September}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12816}, Abstract = {When children make a joint commitment to collaborate, obligations are created. Pairs of 3-year-old children (N = 144) made a joint commitment to play a game. In three different conditions the game was interrupted in the middle either because: (a) the partner child intentionally defected, (b) the partner child was ignorant about how to play, or (c) the apparatus broke. The subject child reacted differently in the three cases, protesting normatively against defection (with emotional arousal and later tattling), teaching when the partner seemed to be ignorant, or simply blaming the apparatus when it broke. These results suggest that 3-year-old children are competent in making appropriate normative evaluations of intentions and obligations of collaborative partners.}, Doi = {10.1111/cdev.12816}, Key = {fds326699} } @article{fds318788, Author = {Schmidt, MFH and Svetlova, M and Johe, J and Tomasello, M}, Title = {Children's developing understanding of legitimate reasons for allocating resources unequally}, Journal = {Cognitive Development}, Volume = {37}, Pages = {42-52}, Publisher = {Elsevier BV}, Year = {2016}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2015.11.001}, Abstract = {Recent research on distributive justice suggests that young children prefer equal distributions. But sometimes unequal distributions are justified, such as when some individuals deserve more than others based on merit, need, or agreed-upon rules. When and how do children start incorporating such factors in their distributive decisions? Three-, 5-, and 8-year-old children (N= 72) had the opportunity to allocate several items to two individuals. One individual was neutral and the other provided a reason why she should be favored. Three of these reasons were legitimate (based on merit, need, or agreed-upon rules) whereas a fourth was idiosyncratic ("I just want more."). We found that with age, children's equality preference diminished and their acceptance of various reasons for privileged treatment increased. It was not until 8 years, however, that they differentiated between legitimate and idiosyncratic reasons for inequality. These findings suggest that children's sense of distributive justice develops from an early equality preference to a more flexible understanding of the basic normative reasons that inequality may, in some cases, be just.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.cogdev.2015.11.001}, Key = {fds318788} } @article{fds327019, Author = {Gross, RL and Drummond, J and Satlof-Bedrick, E and Waugh, WE and Svetlova, M and Brownell, CA}, Title = {Individual differences in toddlers' social understanding and prosocial behavior: disposition or socialization?}, Journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, Volume = {6}, Pages = {600}, Year = {2015}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00600}, Abstract = {We examined how individual differences in social understanding contribute to variability in early-appearing prosocial behavior. Moreover, potential sources of variability in social understanding were explored and examined as additional possible predictors of prosocial behavior. Using a multi-method approach with both observed and parent-report measures, 325 children aged 18-30 months were administered measures of social understanding (e.g., use of emotion words; self-understanding), prosocial behavior (in separate tasks measuring instrumental helping, empathic helping, and sharing, as well as parent-reported prosociality at home), temperament (fearfulness, shyness, and social fear), and parental socialization of prosocial behavior in the family. Individual differences in social understanding predicted variability in empathic helping and parent-reported prosociality, but not instrumental helping or sharing. Parental socialization of prosocial behavior was positively associated with toddlers' social understanding, prosocial behavior at home, and instrumental helping in the lab, and negatively associated with sharing (possibly reflecting parents' increased efforts to encourage children who were less likely to share). Further, socialization moderated the association between social understanding and prosocial behavior, such that social understanding was less predictive of prosocial behavior among children whose parents took a more active role in socializing their prosociality. None of the dimensions of temperament was associated with either social understanding or prosocial behavior. Parental socialization of prosocial behavior is thus an important source of variability in children's early prosociality, acting in concert with early differences in social understanding, with different patterns of influence for different subtypes of prosocial behavior.}, Doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00600}, Key = {fds327019} } @article{fds318789, Author = {Brownell, CA and Iesue, SS and Nichols, SR and Svetlova, M}, Title = {Mine or yours? Development of sharing in toddlers in relation to ownership understanding.}, Journal = {Child Development}, Volume = {84}, Number = {3}, Pages = {906-920}, Year = {2013}, Month = {May}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12009}, Abstract = {To examine early developments in other-oriented resource sharing, fifty-one 18- and 24-month-old children were administered 6 tasks with toys or food that could be shared with an adult playmate who had none. On each task the playmate communicated her desire for the items in a series of progressively more explicit cues. Twenty-four-month-olds shared frequently and spontaneously. Eighteen-month-olds shared when given multiple opportunities and when the partner provided enough communicative support. Younger children engaged in self-focused and hypothesis-testing behavior in lieu of sharing more often than did older children. Ownership understanding, separately assessed, was positively associated with sharing and negatively associated with non-sharing behavior, independent of age and language ability.}, Doi = {10.1111/cdev.12009}, Key = {fds318789} } @article{fds318790, Author = {Brownell, CA and Svetlova, M and Anderson, R and Nichols, SR and Drummond, J}, Title = {Socialization of Early Prosocial Behavior: Parents' Talk about Emotions is Associated with Sharing and Helping in Toddlers.}, Journal = {Infancy}, Volume = {18}, Pages = {91-119}, Year = {2013}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7078.2012.00125.x}, Abstract = {What role does socialization play in the origins of prosocial behavior? We examined one potential socialization mechanism, parents' discourse about others' emotions with very young children in whom prosocial behavior is still nascent. Two studies are reported, one of sharing in 18- and 24-month-olds (n = 29), and one of instrumental and empathy-based helping in 18- and 30-month-olds (n = 62). In both studies, parents read age-appropriate picture books to their children and the content and structure of their emotion-related and internal state discourse were coded. Results showed that children who helped and shared more quickly and more often, especially in tasks that required more complex emotion understanding, had parents who more often asked them to label and explain the emotions depicted in the books. Moreover, it was parents' elicitation of children's talk about emotions rather than parents' own production of emotion labels and explanations that explained children's prosocial behavior, even after controlling for age. Thus, it is the quality, not the quantity, of parents' talk about emotions with their toddlers that matters for early prosocial behavior.}, Doi = {10.1111/j.1532-7078.2012.00125.x}, Key = {fds318790} } @article{fds318791, Author = {Decety, J and Svetlova, M}, Title = {Putting together phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspectives on empathy.}, Journal = {Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience}, Volume = {2}, Number = {1}, Pages = {1-24}, Year = {2012}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2011.05.003}, Abstract = {The ontogeny of human empathy is better understood with reference to the evolutionary history of the social brain. Empathy has deep evolutionary, biochemical, and neurological underpinnings. Even the most advanced forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain connected to core mechanisms associated with affective communication, social attachment, and parental care. In this paper, we argue that it is essential to consider empathy within a neurodevelopmental framework that recognizes both the continuities and changes in socioemotional understanding from infancy to adulthood. We bring together neuroevolutionary and developmental perspectives on the information processing and neural mechanisms underlying empathy and caring, and show that they are grounded in multiple interacting systems and processes. Moreover, empathy in humans is assisted by other abstract and domain-general high-level cognitive abilities such as executive functions, mentalizing and language, as well as the ability to differentiate another's mental states from one's own, which expand the range of behaviors that can be driven by empathy.}, Doi = {10.1016/j.dcn.2011.05.003}, Key = {fds318791} } @article{fds318792, Author = {Svetlova, M and Nichols, SR and Brownell, CA}, Title = {Toddlers' prosocial behavior: from instrumental to empathic to altruistic helping.}, Journal = {Child Development}, Volume = {81}, Number = {6}, Pages = {1814-1827}, Year = {2010}, Month = {November}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01512.x}, Abstract = {The study explored how the meaning of prosocial behavior changes over toddlerhood. Sixty-five 18- and 30-month-olds could help an adult in 3 contexts: instrumental (action based), empathic (emotion based), and altruistic (costly). Children at both ages helped readily in instrumental tasks. For 18-month-olds, empathic helping was significantly more difficult than instrumental helping and required greater communication from the adult about her needs. Altruistic helping, which involved giving up an object of the child's own, was the most difficult for children at both ages. Findings suggest that over the 2nd year of life, prosocial behavior develops from relying on action understanding and explicit communications to understanding others' emotions from subtle cues. Developmental trajectories of social-cognitive and motivational components of early helping are discussed.}, Doi = {10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01512.x}, Key = {fds318792} } @article{fds318793, Author = {Nichols, SR and Svetlova, M and Brownell, CA}, Title = {Toddlers' understanding of peers' emotions.}, Journal = {The Journal of Genetic Psychology}, Volume = {171}, Number = {1}, Pages = {35-53}, Year = {2010}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221320903300346}, Abstract = {The second year of life sees dramatic developments in infants' ability to understand emotions in adults alongside their growing interest in peers. In this study, the authors used a social-referencing paradigm to examine whether 12-, 18-, and 24-month-old children could use a peer's positive or negative emotion messages about toys to regulate their own behavior with the toys. They found that 12-month-olds decreased their play with toys toward which a peer had expressed either positive or negative emotion compared with play following a peer's neutral attention toward a toy. Also, 18-month-olds did not respond systematically, but 24-month-old children increased their toy play after watching a peer display negative affect toward the toy. Regardless of their age, children with siblings decreased their play with toys toward which they had seen a peer display fear, the typical social-referencing response. The authors discuss results in the context of developmental changes in social understanding and peer interaction over the second year of life.}, Doi = {10.1080/00221320903300346}, Key = {fds318793} } @article{fds318794, Author = {Nichols, SR and Svetlova, M and Brownell, CA}, Title = {The role of social understanding and empathic disposition in young children's responsiveness to distress in parents and peers.}, Journal = {Cognition, Brain, Behavior : an Interdisciplinary Journal}, Volume = {13}, Number = {4}, Pages = {449-478}, Year = {2009}, Month = {December}, Abstract = {The second year of life marks the beginning of empathic responsiveness to others' distress, a hallmark of human interaction. We examined the role of social understanding (self-other understanding and emotion understanding) and empathic disposition in individual differences in 12- to 24-month olds' responses to mothers' and an unfamiliar infant peer's distress (N = 71). Results reveal associations between empathic responsiveness to distressed mother and crying infant peer, suggesting that individual differences in prosocial motivation may exist right from the outset, when the ability to generate an empathic, prosocial response first emerges. We further found that above and beyond such dispositional characteristics (and age), children with more advanced social understanding were more empathically responsive to a peer's distress. However, responses to mothers' distress were explained by children's empathic disposition only, and not by their social understanding. Thus, as early as the second year of life some children are dispositionally more inclined to empathy regardless of who is in distress, whether mother or peer. At the same time, emotion understanding and self-other understanding appear to be especially important for explaining individual differences in young children's empathic responsiveness to a peer's distress.}, Key = {fds318794} } @article{fds318795, Author = {Brownell, CA and Svetlova, M and Nichols, S}, Title = {To share or not to share: When do toddlers respond to another's needs?}, Journal = {Infancy}, Volume = {14}, Number = {1}, Pages = {117-130}, Year = {2009}, Month = {January}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15250000802569868}, Abstract = {The developmental origins of sharing remain little understood. Using procedures adapted from research on prosocial behavior in chimpanzees, we presented 18- and 25-month-old children with a sharing task in which they could choose to deliver food to themselves only, or to both themselves and another person, thereby making it possible for them to share without personal sacrifice. The potential recipient, a friendly adult, was either silent about her needs and wants or made them explicit. Both younger and older toddlers chose randomly when the recipient was silent. However, when the recipient vocalized her desires 25-month-olds shared whereas younger children did not. Thus, we demonstrate that children voluntarily share valued resources with others by the end of the second year of life, but that this depends on explicit communicative cues about another's need or desire.}, Doi = {10.1080/15250000802569868}, Key = {fds318795} } %% Chapters in Books @misc{fds340664, Author = {Svetlova, M and Carpenter, M}, Title = {Social Development}, Pages = {415-423}, Booktitle = {The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development}, Publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, Editor = {Hopkins, B and Geangu, E and Linkenauger, S}, Year = {2017}, Month = {October}, ISBN = {110710341X}, Abstract = {Updated and expanded to 124 entries, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development remains the authoritative reference in the field.}, Key = {fds340664} } | |
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