Brownell Celia A, Svetlova Margarita, Anderson Ranita, Nichols Sara R, Drummond Jesse
University of Pittsburgh.
Infancy. 2013 Jan 1;18:91-119. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2012.00125.x. Epub 2012 Apr 26.
What role does socialization play in the origins of prosocial behavior? We examined one potential socialization mechanism, parents' discourse about others' emotions with very young children in whom prosocial behavior is still nascent. Two studies are reported, one of sharing in 18- and 24-month-olds (n = 29), and one of instrumental and empathy-based helping in 18- and 30-month-olds (n = 62). In both studies, parents read age-appropriate picture books to their children and the content and structure of their emotion-related and internal state discourse were coded. Results showed that children who helped and shared more quickly and more often, especially in tasks that required more complex emotion understanding, had parents who more often asked them to label and explain the emotions depicted in the books. Moreover, it was parents' elicitation of children's talk about emotions rather than parents' own production of emotion labels and explanations that explained children's prosocial behavior, even after controlling for age. Thus, it is the quality, not the quantity, of parents' talk about emotions with their toddlers that matters for early prosocial behavior.
社会化在亲社会行为的起源中扮演着怎样的角色？我们研究了一种潜在的社会化机制，即父母与幼儿（亲社会行为仍处于萌芽阶段）谈论他人情绪的方式。本文报告了两项研究，一项针对18个月和24个月大的幼儿的分享行为（n = 29），另一项针对18个月和30个月大的幼儿基于工具性和同理心的帮助行为（n = 62）。在两项研究中，父母都给孩子阅读适合其年龄的图画书，并对他们与情绪相关及内部状态的话语内容和结构进行编码。结果表明，那些更迅速、更频繁地提供帮助和分享的孩子，尤其是在需要更复杂情绪理解的任务中，他们的父母更经常要求他们说出并解释书中描绘的情绪。此外，即使在控制了年龄因素之后，能够解释孩子亲社会行为的是父母对孩子谈论情绪的引导，而非父母自己给出的情绪标签和解释。因此，对于早期亲社会行为而言，父母与幼儿谈论情绪的质量而非数量才是关键。
