Purpose: Sociometric studies and adult reports have established that children with Language Disorder (LD) are at risk of peer relationship difficulties. However, we have limited knowledge of how children with LD understand friendship, whom they deem as a good or bad friend, and what role their friendship concepts play in their relationships with…

This research explores how decision-making autonomy and social distance impact young children's sharing behaviour. In Study 1, findings from 159 Chinese children (total N = 159, 72 boys, aged 3-6 years) revealed that children aged 5-6 exhibited significantly more sharing behaviours in the controlled condition, however 3-4 years-olds showed no…

Anglophone societies in which the sovereign individual is primary vis and vis social relations, and policy focuses on economic competition and consumption in education, find it hard to grasp non-pecuniary outcomes in higher education. These include the self-formation of students as persons and collective goods like knowledge, technological…

Infants can help and share in the second year of life. However, there is limited knowledge as to variability in these behaviors as a function of target (e.g., caregiver vs. unfamiliar adult) and the influence of caregiver support on infant prosocial behavior. Infants (N = 268, 124 female) at 1-2 years of age (M = 1.47, SD = 0.27) and again at 2-3…

Engaging in prosocial behavior is costly. By selectively directing prosocial behavior toward individuals with a high probability of reciprocating, we are able to offset these potential costs and maintain a sustainable prosocial system. Often, we determine whether an individual will make a good prosocial partner through the observation of their…

This article explores conflicts among toddlers in kindergarten and the impact of toys in these conflicts. The author describes these interactions as part of how children develop and express their citizenship, and argues that staff members should hesitate before interfering with rules in order to prevent such conflicts. This is based on Mouffe's…

Joint engagement--the sharing of events during social interactions--is an important context for early learning. To date, sharing topics that are only heard has not been systematically documented. To describe the development of auditory joint engagement, 48 child-parent dyads were observed 5 times from 12 to 30 months during seminaturalistic play.…

The Learn-Earn-Return approach is frequently promoted by coaches motivating entrepreneurs to give back in the third stage of life after their younger years of learning and earning. However, this article describes how the Thai Child Development Foundation (TCDF), a charity operating in rural Thailand, implements the Learn-Earn-Return focus…

This study examined verbal and non-verbal features of mother-infant shared book reading in Australia during the first year of life and explored the relationship between these features and infant cognition. Mother-infant dyads were observed in this cross-sectional study reading an unfamiliar book in a laboratory setting when infants were aged 6…

Reputational concerns are known to promote cooperation. Individuals regularly act more prosocially when their behavior is observable by others. Here, we investigate 4- and 5-year-old (N = 144) children's reputational strategies in a competitive group setting. The aim of the current study was to explore whether children's sharing behavior is…

Promoting cooperative social behavior is a major task of preschool teachers. Children are taught to be nice, be fair, and share. This mandate, however, runs up against the fact that young children are naturally egotistical and unable to appreciate the perspective of others. This leaves teachers with questions about how strongly they should push…

Children's problem behaviour in the preschool period is a severe obstacle to social-emotional development and a precondition for maladjustment in social relationships during school life. Professionals in the field have been improving existing practices to prevent and intervene in young children's challenging behaviour. To this end, many…

Previous research has shown that the majority of 8-year-old children share valuable resources equally with others, whereas 4-year-olds are more likely to favor themselves in their sharing allocations. In this study, we examine whether these patterns of sharing behavior are affected by the needs of the recipient or by the recipient's previous moral…

The singularity effect of identifiable victims is described as the greater willingness to help a single, identified victim than to help a group of victims with the same need (whether victims are identified or not), which occurs even when the single victim is one of the group's members. The current research examines the development of this…

This study examines the process through which children build a sense of community in small groups in a day care centre. The study asks the following: how does children's sense of community develop, and what are its key features? Data were collected by applying ethnographic methods in a group of three- to five-year-old children over eleven months.…