This study examined how children reason about competing personal preferences. Seventy-two participants (mean ages 5 years 5 months, 10 years 4 months, and 17 years 7 months) considered three hypothetical scenarios in which a protagonist's personal preference was in conflict with her or his friend's personal preference. Scenarios varied in the…

Fairness is central to morality. Previous research has shown that children begin to understand fairness between the ages of four and six, depending on the context and method used. Within distributive contexts, there is little clear evidence that children have a concept of fairness before the age of five. This research, however, has mostly examined…

This study tested assumptions and conclusions reached in an earlier confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) study of the social competence (SC) construct for preschool children. Two samples (total N = 408; a new Portuguese sample and one from US samples that had participated in the original study) contributed data. Seven SC indicators were tested for…

When children apologize, they accept responsibility for wrongdoings and act to reconcile social relationships. Apologies to siblings were coded in 40 families that were observed for 9 h when children were 2 1/2 and 4 1/2 years old, and again 2 years later. We found that sibling apologies were rare, generally simple in form, and more frequent after…

Ninety-five Japanese children (aged 6-12) were interviewed using hypothetical stories to examine their reasoning about parent-child conflicts. Participants were most likely to reject parental authority and to support child's discretion in conflict situations where the parent interfered in the child's personal choice and gave the child commands…

This article reports the results of two experiments studying the effects of type of interaction on infant production of declarative pointing. In Experiment 1, intensity of social presence was manipulated in adult-infant interaction with 12-19-month-olds (no social presence; adult responding only; adult also initiating joint attentional bids).…

In order to assess the effects of displacement and exposure to violence on children's moral reasoning, Colombian children exposed to minimal violence (non-displaced or low risk; N = 99) and to extreme violence (displaced or high risk; N = 94), evenly divided by gender at 6, 9, and 12 years of age, were interviewed regarding their evaluation of…

A minimal group study examined the effect of peer group norms on children's direct and indirect bullying intentions. Prior to an inter-group drawing competition, children (N = 85) aged seven and nine years were assigned to a group that had a norm of out-group dislike or out-group liking. Results indicated that, regardless of group norms, the…

The main research question of this study is whether children's emotional responses to specific stress-evoking situations (anger or anxiety) and the coping strategies they would use are related. Furthermore, it is asked if these relationships are consistent over a specific age range. A total sample of 432 second graders participated in a…

This study examined (1) whether 5- to 12-year-old children consider gender and ethnicity to be central and important components of their identity, (2) whether the relative centrality of these identity components differs across children, and (3) how the centrality of children's gender and ethnic identities is affected by a dynamic situational…

Three experiments examined 6- to 11-year-olds' judgments about appropriate self-descriptions in front of different audiences. Findings indicated that only older children differentiated between an unfamiliar peer and unfamiliar adult audience in selecting one of two self-descriptive statements. Even the youngest children differentiated between…