The role of affective information in the sociomoral development of preschool children

Early theories of social-cognitive development emphasized children's unilateral respect for rules and authority (Piaget, 1932/65). Recently, however, children have been found to make conceptual distinctions among moral, conventional, and personal events. These distinctions are hypothesized to be related to the differential judgments that 6- to 8-year-old children have been shown to make about the emotional experience of others in these types of events (Arsenio & Ford, 1985). However, it is not known if preschoolers make similar distinctions between the affect of various participants in different event-types. The judgments of preschoolers regarding the affect of participants in sociomoral events were examined. Forty-two 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were presented with scenarios depicting different sociomoral event-types, and asked to assess the affective consequences of events for story participants. Results show that preschoolers differentiate type of affect between sociomoral events and between event participants. Potential implications are that young children are aware of the emotional consequences of events and that this knowledge plays a role in their sociomoral judgments.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Year

1993

Author dc:creator

• Wiersma, Noelle Susanna

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/rtds/309

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:oasis.library.unlv.edu:rtds-1308