Kochukhova Olga, Dyagileva Yulia, Mikhailova Anna, Orekhova Lilia, Makhin Sergei, Pavlenko Vladimir
Department of Psychology, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala University, Sweden.
V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, Simferopol, Russian Federation.
Psychol Russ. 2021 Feb 12;14(4):78-93. doi: 10.11621/pir.2021.0406. eCollection 2021.
Prosocial behavior is the key component of social and interpersonal relations. One of the elements of prosociality is helping behavior, which emerges already in early childhood. Researchers have identified several domains of helping behavior: instrumental helping, comforting another person, and sharing resources with others. The development of helping behavior can depend on a number of factors: children's age, the social situation of development, communication skills, and the ability to understand the feelings and needs of another person.
In Study 1, the main goal was to determine the effects of age and cognitive, language, and motor development on instrumental helping skills in early childhood. The goal of Study 2 was to estimate the effects of rearing in an adverse social environment by comparing the capacity for instrumental helping in family-raised and institutionalized children.
The authors examined toddlers' (N = 198) ability to initiate spontaneous helping and the factors that may influence it. Cognitive, language, and fine motor skills were measured by the Bayley Scales of Infant and Child Development, 3rd edition. Children's instrumental helping behavior was assessed according to the procedure presented by Warneken and Tomasello, with a few modifications.
Study 1 demonstrated that children's ability to initiate helping was dependent on their age: the non-helpers were significantly younger than the helpers. Children's language skills also played a significant role in their helping behavior. The children with higher language skills helped the adult more often and more quickly. Study 2 demonstrated that institutional placement per se was not related to toddlers' ability to initiate helping. Language ability was associated with helping behavior both in institution- and family-reared toddlers.
Instrumental helping in early childhood is related to children's age, language skills, and rearing conditions.
亲社会行为是社会和人际关系的关键组成部分。亲社会性的要素之一是帮助行为，这种行为在幼儿期就已出现。研究人员已确定了帮助行为的几个领域：工具性帮助、安慰他人以及与他人分享资源。帮助行为的发展可能取决于多种因素：儿童的年龄、发展的社会环境、沟通技巧以及理解他人感受和需求的能力。
在研究1中，主要目标是确定年龄以及认知、语言和运动发展对幼儿工具性帮助技能的影响。研究2的目标是通过比较家庭抚养和机构抚养儿童的工具性帮助能力，评估在不利社会环境中抚养的影响。
作者考察了198名幼儿自发发起帮助的能力以及可能影响该能力的因素。认知、语言和精细运动技能通过贝利婴幼儿发展量表第三版进行测量。儿童的工具性帮助行为根据瓦尔内肯和托马塞洛提出的程序进行评估，并做了一些修改。
研究1表明，儿童发起帮助的能力取决于他们的年龄：不提供帮助的儿童明显比提供帮助的儿童年龄小。儿童的语言技能在其帮助行为中也起着重要作用。语言技能较高的儿童更频繁、更迅速地帮助成年人。研究2表明，机构安置本身与幼儿发起帮助的能力无关。语言能力与机构抚养和家庭抚养的幼儿的帮助行为均有关联。
幼儿期的工具性帮助与儿童的年龄、语言技能和抚养条件有关。
