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Hamann, Katharina; Warneken, Felix; Tomasello, Michael – Child Development, 2012
This study investigated young children's commitment to a joint goal by assessing whether peers in collaborative activities continue to collaborate until all received their rewards. Forty-eight 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children worked on an apparatus dyadically. One child got access to her reward early. For the partner to benefit as well, this child…
Descriptors: Goal Orientation, Toddlers, Cooperation, Child Development
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Hepach, Robert; Vaish, Amrisha; Tomasello, Michael – Developmental Psychology, 2013
Three-year-old children saw an adult displaying the exact same distress in 3 different conditions: (a) the adult's distress was appropriate to a genuine harm, (b) the adult's distress was an overreaction to a minor inconvenience, and (c) there was no apparent cause for the adult's distress. Children who witnessed the adult being appropriately…
Descriptors: Emotional Response, Prosocial Behavior, Helping Relationship, Toddlers
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Vaish, Amrisha; Carpenter, Malinda; Tomasello, Michael – Child Development, 2010
Two studies investigated whether young children are selectively prosocial toward others, based on the others' moral behaviors. In Study 1 (N = 54), 3-year-olds watched 1 adult (the actor) harming or helping another adult. Children subsequently helped the harmful actor less often than a third (previously neutral) adult, but helped the helpful and…
Descriptors: Prosocial Behavior, Young Children, Moral Values, Intention
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Grafenhain, Maria; Behne, Tanya; Carpenter, Malinda; Tomasello, Michael – Developmental Psychology, 2009
When adults make a joint commitment to act together, they feel an obligation to their partner. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether young children also understand joint commitments to act together. In the first study, when an adult orchestrated with the child a joint commitment to play a game together and then broke off from their joint…
Descriptors: Young Children, Toddlers, Age Differences, Adults
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Dittmar, Miriam; Abbot-Smith, Kirsten; Lieven, Elena; Tomasello, Michael – Developmental Science, 2008
Using a preferential looking methodology with novel verbs, Gertner, Fisher and Eisengart (2006 ) found that 21-month-old English children seemed to understand the syntactic marking of transitive word order in an abstract, verb-general way. In the current study we tested whether young German children of this same age have this same understanding.…
Descriptors: Sentences, Verbs, Nouns, Child Development
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Rakoczy, Hannes; Tomasello, Michael – Developmental Science, 2006
Twenty-two- and 27-month-old children were tested for their understanding of pretending as a specific intentional action form. Pairs of superficially similar behaviors--pretending to perform an action and trying to perform that action--were demonstrated to children. The 27-month-olds, and to some degree the 22-month-olds, showed in their responses…
Descriptors: Toddlers, Responses, Cognitive Ability, Intention
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Tomasello, Michael; Carpenter, Malinda – Developmental Science, 2007
We argue for the importance of processes of shared intentionality in children's early cognitive development. We look briefly at four important social-cognitive skills and how they are transformed by shared intentionality. In each case, we look first at a kind of individualistic version of the skill--as exemplified most clearly in the behavior of…
Descriptors: Socialization, Cognitive Development, Intention, Child Development
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Namy, Laura L.; Campbell, Aimee L.; Tomasello, Michael – Journal of Cognition and Development, 2004
This article reports 2 experiments examining the changing role of iconicity in symbol learning and its implications regarding the mechanisms supporting symbol-to-referent mapping. Experiment 1 compared 18- and 26-month-olds' mapping of iconic gestures (e.g., hopping gesture for a rabbit) vs. arbitrary gestures (e.g., dropping motion for a rabbit).…
Descriptors: Nonverbal Communication, Role, Nonverbal Learning, Infants
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Rakoczy, Hannes; Tomasello, Michael; Striano, Tricia – Developmental Science, 2005
The focus of the present study was the role of cultural learning in infants' acquisition of pretense actions with objects. In three studies, 18- and 24-month-olds (n= 64) were presented with novel objects, and either pretense or instrumental actions were demonstrated with these. When children were then allowed to act upon the objects themselves,…
Descriptors: Child Development, Novelty (Stimulus Dimension), Play, Toys
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Moll, Henrike; Tomasello, Michael – Developmental Science, 2004
Infants follow the gaze direction of others from the middle of the first year of life. In attempting to determine how infants understand the looking behavior of adults, a number of recent studies have blocked the adult's line of sight in some way (e.g. with a blindfold or with a barrier). In contrast, in the current studies an adult looked behind…
Descriptors: Infants, Eye Movements, Age Differences, Toddlers
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Behne, Tanya; Carpenter, Malinda; Tomasello, Michael – Developmental Science, 2005
This study explored infants' ability to infer communicative intent as expressed in non-linguistic gestures. Sixty children aged 14, 18 and 24 months participated. In the context of a hiding game, an adult indicated for the child the location of a hidden toy by giving a communicative cue: either pointing or ostensive gazing toward the container…
Descriptors: Cues, Interpersonal Communication, Infants, Toys