This article aims to review and debate the concept of lying and the variables associated with it, such as the age of its emergence in infancy, developmental patterns in a life cycle, motives for lying, consequences on social relationships and contextual and educational factors. The paradoxical nature of this behaviour is also emphasized because it…

The study examined whether preschool children conceive of empathy-based comforting as being an obligatory reaction toward others in emotional need. We presented 3- and 5-year-old children with three scenarios in which protagonists showed different reactions toward an agent who has hurt herself. One protagonist reacted antisocially by laughing at…

Research on the role of moral emotions in moral judgment, both in hypothetical dilemmas and in real-life moral decision making, has focused on preschool and elementary school age, with few studies spanning a larger age range, into adolescence and adulthood. The present special issue addresses a neglected area, the development of moral emotions and…

Parental warmth and hostility are two key dimensions of parenting for child development, but the differential effects of these parenting dimensions on child prosocial and antisocial development has not been adequately investigated. The current study hypothesized that parental warmth would be uniquely related to child callous-unemotional traits and…

The development of children's lie-telling abilities is considered to be a social and cognitive milestone. While occasional lying is developmentally appropriate, the use of frequent, antisocial lies as a maladaptive problem-solving mechanism can indicate behaviour problems. Since lying is often considered a moral transgression, researchers should…

Amid protracted conflict, children are raised in divided contexts that shape the development of their intergroup attitudes and behaviors. Social identity development theory (SIDT) suggests that in-group preference may contribute to more negative out-group attitudes and behaviors in middle childhood. In such contexts, in-group favoritism may shape…

Forming social evaluations of others is a core component of social cognition. In this study, the relationship between bilingual experience and social evaluations was investigated in 8-month-old infants. We compared monolingual and bilingual infants' responses to third-party interactions where characters performed prosocial and antisocial actions…

We assessed the psychometric properties of the Social Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ), a 30-item questionnaire evaluating social (e.g., disruptive behaviors, bullying) and emotional problems (e.g., anxiety, depression) among children aged 3.5-12 years. Children (n = 1,950, 50.21% boys) were drawn from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child…

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…

This paper describes the development, implementation and preliminary evaluation of the Reaching Educators and Children (REACH) program, a training and coaching intervention designed to increase the capacity of early childhood teachers to support children's social and emotional development. We evaluated REACH with 139 teachers of toddler and…

Background: Individuals with fragile-X syndrome exhibit developmental delay, hyperexcitation and social anxiety; they also show lack of attention and hyperactivity. Few studies have investigated whether levels of functioning change with increasing age. Here, we explored developmental changes across adolescence in the cognitive and behavioural…

Previous research has shown that 6-month-olds evaluate others on the basis of their social behaviors--they are attracted to prosocial individuals, and avoid antisocial individuals (Hamlin, Wynn & Bloom, 2007). The current studies investigate these capacities prior to 6 months of age. Results from two experiments indicate that even 3-month-old…

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…

The present study examines the quality of peer relations as a mediator between exposure to IPV (intimate partner violence) and internalizing behaviors in a sample of 129 preadolescents and adolescents (ages 10-18), who were interviewed via telephone as part of a multigenerational, prospective, longitudinal study. Relational victimization is also…

The happy victimizer demarks a phenomenon in which there is a discrepancy between young children's understanding of moral rules and their attribution of positive emotions to wrongdoers. In this paper, we argue why developmental transitions in this aspect of emotion understanding have both theoretical and applied value. First, the research…