Department of Psychology.
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park.
Dev Psychol. 2019 Mar;55(3):606-611. doi: 10.1037/dev0000654. Epub 2018 Dec 6.
When young children recruit others to help a person in need, media reports often treat it as a remarkable event. Yet it is unclear how commonly children perform this type of pro-social behavior and what forms of social understanding, cognitive abilities, and motivational factors promote or discourage it. In this study, 48 three- to four-year-old children could choose between two actors to retrieve an out-of-reach object for a third person; during this event, one actor was physically unable to provide help. Nearly all of children's responses appropriately incorporated the actors' action capacities, indicating that rational prosocial reasoning-the cognitive basis for effective indirect helping-is common at this young age. However, only half of children actually directed an actor to help, suggesting that additional motivational factors constrained their prosocial actions. A behavioral measure of social inhibition and within-task scaffolding that increased children's personal involvement were both strongly associated with children's initiation of indirect helping behavior. These results highlight social inhibition and recognizing one's own potential agency as key motivational challenges that children must overcome to recruit help for others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
当幼儿招募他人帮助有需要的人时，媒体报道通常将其视为一件了不起的事情。然而，目前尚不清楚儿童普遍会表现出这种亲社会行为，以及哪些形式的社会理解、认知能力和动机因素促进或阻碍了这种行为。在这项研究中，48 名三到四岁的儿童可以在两个演员中选择一个来帮助第三人取回够不着的物品；在这个事件中，一个演员身体上无法提供帮助。几乎所有儿童的反应都恰当地考虑到了演员的行为能力，这表明理性的亲社会推理——有效间接帮助的认知基础——在这个年龄段很常见。然而，只有一半的孩子实际上让一个演员去帮忙，这表明其他动机因素限制了他们的亲社会行为。社会抑制的行为测量和增加儿童个人参与度的任务内支撑都与儿童发起间接帮助行为密切相关。这些结果强调了社会抑制和认识到自己的潜在能动性是儿童必须克服的关键动机挑战，以便为他人寻求帮助。（APA 心理档案数据库记录（c）2019，保留所有权利）。
