Young children tend to behave more generously when their actions are identified than when they are anonymous, yet we know little about the cognitive foundations required for anonymity to impact generosity. In three studies we examined Canadian children's understanding of anonymity and its impact on sharing in anonymous and identified contexts.…

This study investigated the development of sharing expectations and sharing behavior in 3 groups of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. We examined (a) whether preschool children expect a person to share more with a friend than with a disliked peer and (b) whether their expectation about others' sharing behavior depends on whether there is a cost or…

This study explored factors underlying preschoolers' ability to make future-oriented choices. In a delay-of-gratification choice task, quantity and visibility of the reward was systematically varied. Participants included 90 typically developing children aged 2-4 years. Children made more choices to delay gratification as the quantity of the…

Infants follow the gaze of an individual with whom they are directly interacting by the end of the first year. By 18 months infants are capable of learning novel words in observational (or third-party) contexts (Floor & Akhtar, 2006). To examine third-party gaze following in 12- and 18-month-olds, the parent and experimenter engaged in a…

The choice to delay gratification, opting for a greater reward later instead of a smaller reward now, has been used as a measure of preschoolers' ability to make future-oriented decisions. The present studies investigated to what extent these choice tasks reflect children's ability to make choices in favour of their future self. In Experiment 1,…

Examined whether prudence and altruism, in situations involving future desires, follow similar developmental courses between ages 3 and 5. Tested children on ability to forego current opportunity in order to gratify their own future desires or those of research assistant. Found that between ages 3 and 4, children develop some common mechanism…