Economic trust in young children

The role of social motivation in sharing and fairness: insights from Williams syndrome

BACKGROUND

Sharing and fairness are important prosocial behaviors that help us navigate the social world. However, little is known about how and whether individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS) engage in these behaviors. The unique phenotype of individuals with WS, consisting of high social motivation and limited social cognition, can also offer insight into the role of social motivation in sharing and fairness when compared to typically developing (TD) individuals. The current study used established experimental paradigms to examine sharing and fairness in individuals with WS and TD individuals.

METHODS

We compared a sample of patients with WS to TD children (6-year-olds) matched by mental age (MA) on two experimental tasks: the Dictator Game (DG, Experiment 1, N = 17 WS, 20 TD) with adults modeling giving behaviors used to test sharing and the Inequity Game (IG, Experiment 2, N = 14 WS, 17 TD) used to test fairness.

RESULTS

Results showed that the WS group behaved similarly to the TD group for baseline giving in the DG and in the IG, rejecting disadvantageous offers but accepting advantageous ones. However, after viewing an adult model giving behavior, the WS group gave more than their baseline, with many individuals giving more than half, while the TD group gave less. Combined these results suggest that social motivation is sufficient for sharing and, in particular, generous sharing, as well as the self-focused form of fairness. Further, individuals with WS appear capable of both learning to be more generous and preventing disadvantageous outcomes, a more complex profile than previously known.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, the present study provides a snapshot into sharing and fairness-related behaviors in WS, contributing to our understanding of the intriguing social-behavioral phenotype associated with this developmental disorder.

Strategic social decision making undergoes significant changes in typically developing and autistic early adolescents

Information sampling about others' trustworthiness prior to cooperation allows humans to minimize the risk of exploitation. Here, we examined whether early adolescence or preadolescence, a stage defined as in between childhood and adolescence, is a significant developmental period for strategic social decisions. We also sought to characterize differences between autistic children and their typically developing (TD) peers. TD (N = 48) and autistic (N = 56) 8- to 12-year-olds played an online information sampling trust game. While both groups adapted their information sampling and cooperation to the various trustworthiness levels of the trustees, groups differed in how age and social skills modulated task behavior. In the TD group social skills were a stronger overall predictor of task behavior. In the autistic group, age was a stronger predictor and interacted with social skills. Computational modeling revealed that both groups used the same heuristic information sampling strategy-albeit older TD children were more efficient as reflected by decreasing decision noise with age. Autistic children had lower prior beliefs about the trustee's trustworthiness compared to TD children. These lower priors indicate that children believed the trustees to be less trustworthy. Lower priors scaled with lower social skills across groups. Notably, groups did not differ in prior uncertainty, meaning that the priors of TD and autistic children were equally strong. Taken together, we found significant development in information sampling and cooperation in early adolescence and nuanced differences between TD and autistic children. Our study highlights the importance of deep phenotyping of children including clinical measures, behavioral experiments and computational modeling. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We specified how early adolescents with and without an autism diagnosis sampled information about their interaction partners and made cooperation decisions in a strategic game. Early adolescence is a significant developmental period for strategic decision making, marked by significant changes in information sampling efficiency and adaptivity to the partner's behavior. Autistic and non-autistic groups differed in how age and social skills modulated task behavior; in non-autistic children behavior was more indicative of overall social skills. Computational modeling revealed differences between autistic and non-autistic groups in their initial beliefs about cooperation partners; autistic children expected their partners to be less trustworthy.

Face masks have a limited influence on first impressions: evidence from three experiments

Considering the widespread use of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the goal of the current study was to examine how occlusion of the lower half of the face may impact first impression formation. We conducted three experiments, each building on previous research, investigating the effect of face masks on first impressions of faces across the lifespan (children, young and older adults). Experiment 1 examined whether the mandatory influence of happy facial expressions on perceived trustworthiness in young adult faces is influenced by face masks. Experiment 2 examined behavioural consequences of adults' first impressions of child faces to determine whether masks reduce the effect of facial niceness on interpretations of ambiguous behaviour. Experiment 3 investigated consensus for first impressions of trustworthiness and competence in older adult faces with and without masks, as well as consensus on underlying facial cues. The results of all three experiments present converging evidence that masks do not have a significant impact on first impressions and their behavioural consequences.

First impressions of child faces: Facial trustworthiness influences adults' interpretations of children's behavior in ambiguous situations

Despite the profound behavioral consequences that first impressions of trustworthiness have on adult populations, few studies have examined how adults' first impressions of trustworthiness influence behavioral outcomes for children. Using a novel task design, we examined adults' perceptions of children's behavior in ambiguous situations. After a brief presentation of a child's face (high trust or low trust), participants viewed the child's face embedded within an ambiguous scene involving two children (Scene Task) or read a vignette about a misbehavior done by that child (Misbehavior Task). In the Scene Task, participants described what they believed to be happening in each scene; in the Misbehavior Task, participants indicated whether the behavior was done on purpose or by accident. In both tasks, participants also rated the behavior of the target child and indicated whether that child would be a good friend. In Experiment 1, young adults (n = 61) and older adults (n = 57) viewed unaltered face images. In Experiment 2, young adults (N = 59) completed the same tasks while viewing images of child faces morphed toward high-trust and low-trust averages. In both experiments, ambiguous scenes and misbehaviors were interpreted more positively when the target child had a high-trust face versus a low-trust face, with comparable patterns of results for the two age groups. Collectively, our results demonstrate that a child's facial trustworthiness biases how adults interpret children's behavior-a heuristic that may have lasting behavioral consequences for children through a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Developmental asymmetries in learning to adjust to cooperative and uncooperative environments

Learning to successfully navigate social environments is a critical developmental goal, predictive of long-term wellbeing. However, little is known about how people learn to adjust to different social environments, and how this behaviour emerges across development. Here, we use a series of economic games to assess how children, adolescents, and young adults learn to adjust to social environments that differ in their level of cooperation (i.e., trust and coordination). Our results show an asymmetric developmental pattern: adjustment requiring uncooperative behaviour remains constant across adolescence, but adjustment requiring cooperative behaviour improves markedly across adolescence. Behavioural and computational analyses reveal that age-related differences in this social learning are shaped by age-related differences in the degree of inequality aversion and in the updating of beliefs about others. Our findings point to early adolescence as a phase of rapid change in cooperative behaviours, and highlight this as a key developmental window for interventions promoting well-adjusted social behaviour.

"Who will share with me?": Preschoolers rely on their friends more than on their nonfriends to share with them

During the preschool years, children start to share selectively with close affiliates such as friends. However, it is unclear whether preschool children also selectively rely on their own friends more than on their nonfriends to share with them. Moreover, the developmental course of this relationship-dependent reliance is unknown. In the current study, therefore, we investigated to what extent preschoolers rely on their friends and nonfriends to share with them. To this end, we analyzed the choices of 82 3- to 5-year old children by means of a metacognitive opt-out paradigm. Children were led to believe that a friend and a disliked peer have had the opportunity-but have not been obligated-to share a highly valued resource with them by putting it in a box. Children could then choose between the above-mentioned box by their peer and an opt-out box that contained a slightly less attractive but certain item. Thus, children were expected to choose the peer's box only if they thought that their peer had shared with them. Otherwise, they should choose the opt-out option to maximize their outcome. Our results reveal developmental changes with older but not younger preschool children relying on their friends to share with them and relying more on their friends than on their nonfriends. This highlights the developmental changes in selective reliance over the preschool years and gives further insight into how young children learn to navigate the social world.

Economic trust in young children

Mutually beneficial interactions often require trust that others will reciprocate. Such interpersonal trust is foundational to evolutionarily unique aspects of human social behaviour, such as economic exchange. In adults, interpersonal trust is often assessed using the 'trust game', in which a lender invests resources in a trustee who may or may not repay the loan. This game captures two crucial elements of economic exchange: the potential for greater mutual benefits by trusting in others, and the moral hazard that others may betray that trust. While adults across cultures can trust others, little is known about the developmental origins of this crucial cooperative ability. We developed the first version of the trust game for use with young children that addresses these two components of trust. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that 4- and 6-year-olds recognize opportunities to invest in others, sharing more when reciprocation is possible than in a context measuring pure generosity. Yet, children become better with age at investing in trustworthy over untrustworthy partners, indicating that this cooperative skill emerges later in ontogeny. Together, our results indicate that young children can engage in complex economic exchanges involving judgements about interpersonal trust and show increasing sensitivity to appropriate partners over development.