Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Child Dev. 2010 Nov-Dec;81(6):1814-27. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01512.x.
The study explored how the meaning of prosocial behavior changes over toddlerhood. Sixty-five 18- and 30-month-olds could help an adult in 3 contexts: instrumental (action based), empathic (emotion based), and altruistic (costly). Children at both ages helped readily in instrumental tasks. For 18-month-olds, empathic helping was significantly more difficult than instrumental helping and required greater communication from the adult about her needs. Altruistic helping, which involved giving up an object of the child's own, was the most difficult for children at both ages. Findings suggest that over the 2nd year of life, prosocial behavior develops from relying on action understanding and explicit communications to understanding others' emotions from subtle cues. Developmental trajectories of social-cognitive and motivational components of early helping are discussed.
该研究探讨了亲社会行为在幼儿期的意义变化。65 名 18 个月和 30 个月大的儿童可以在三种情境下帮助成年人：工具性（基于行动）、共情（基于情感）和利他主义（有代价的）。两个年龄段的儿童都很乐意在工具性任务中提供帮助。对于 18 个月大的儿童，共情帮助比工具性帮助困难得多，并且需要成年人就她的需求进行更多的沟通。利他主义帮助，即放弃儿童自己的物品，对两个年龄段的儿童来说都是最困难的。研究结果表明，在生命的第二年，亲社会行为的发展从依赖对行动的理解和明确的交流，发展到从微妙的线索中理解他人的情绪。讨论了早期帮助的社会认知和动机成分的发展轨迹。
