Five-year-old children value reasons in apologies for belief-based accidents

Accidents can be intent-based (unintended action-unintended outcome) or belief-based (intended action-unintended outcome). As compared to intent-based accidents, giving reasons is more crucial for belief-based accidents because the transgressor appears to have intentionally transgressed. In Study 1, UK-based preschoolers who were native English speakers (N = 96, 53 girls, collected 2020-2021) witnessed two intent-based or belief-based accidents; one transgressor apologized, the other apologized with a reason. Five-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, favored the reason-giving transgressor following a belief-based accident but not an intent-based accident (where an apology sufficed). In Study 2, 5-year-olds (N = 48, 25 girls, collected 2021) distinguished between "good" and "bad" reasons for the harm caused. Thus, 5-year-old children recognize when reasons should accompany apologies and account for the quality of these reasons.

A cross-linguistic approach to children's reasoning: Turkish- and English-speaking children's use of metatalk

When collaboratively solving problems, children discuss information reliability, for example, whether claims are based on direct or indirect observation, termed as "metatalk". Unlike English in which evidential marking is optional, languages with obligatory evidential marking such as Turkish, might provide children some advantages in communicating the reliability of their claims. The current preregistered online study investigated Turkish- and English-speaking 3- and 5-year-old children's (N = 144) use of metatalk. The child and the experimenter (E) were asked to decide in which of the two houses a toy was hiding. One house had the toy's footprints. When E left the Zoom meeting, an informant told the child that the toy was in the other house without the footprints in three within-subjects conditions. In the direct-observation condition, the child witnessed the informant move the toy. In the indirect-witness condition, the informant checked both houses and said that the toy was in the other house. In the indirect-hearsay condition, the informant simply said that the toy was in the other house. When E returned, the child had to convince E about how they knew the toy was in the other house using metatalk (e.g., "I saw it move"). Turkish-speaking children used metatalk more often than did English-speaking children, especially in the direct-observation condition. In the two indirect conditions, both groups of 5-year-olds were similar in their use of metatalk, but Turkish speaking 3-year-olds produced metatalk more often than did English-speaking 3-year-olds. Thus, languages with obligatory evidential marking might facilitate children's collaborative reasoning. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children as young as 3 years of age can produce metatalk. Turkish-speaking children produce metatalk more often than English-speaking children. The difference between the two linguistic groups is more pronounced at age 3.

Preschool children's use of meta-talk to make rational collaborative decisions

In collaborative decision-making, partners compare reasons behind conflicting proposals through meta-talk. We investigated UK-based preschoolers' (mixed socioeconomic status) use of meta-talk (Data collection: 2018-2020). In Study 1, 5- and 7-year-old peer dyads (N = 128, 61 girls) heard conflicting claims about an animal from two informants. One prefaced her claim with "I know"; the other with "I think". Dyads identified the more reliable informant through meta-talk ("She said she knows"). In Study 2, 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 64, 34 girls) searched for a toy with an adult partner making incorrect proposals. Children refuted this through reporting what they had witnessed (It cannot be there because "I saw it move", "she moved it"). In preschool period, children start using meta-talk to make rational collaborative decisions.

Young children rely on gossip when jointly reasoning about whom to believe

People rely on reputational information communicated via gossip when deciding about with whom to cooperate, whom to believe, and whom to trust. In two studies, we investigated whether 5- and 7-year-old children trust in gossip when determining a course of action. In Study 1, 5- and 7-year-old German-speaking peer dyads (N = 64 dyads, 32 female dyads) were presented with a collaborative problem-solving task (e.g., deciding together what a creature eats). Each child individually received conflicting information about the solution from a different informant (e.g., one proposed rocks; the other proposed sand). Each child additionally heard gossip about the informant's reputation: one informant had a good reputation; the other had a bad reputation. In the experimental condition, the reputation was relevant to the task (honesty), whereas it was irrelevant in the control condition (tidiness). Seven-year-old dyads, and 5-year-old dyads to a lesser extent, settled on the items suggested by the informant with good reputation in the experimental but not in the control condition. Only 7-year-old children explicitly referred to the information conveyed via gossip, engaging in metatalk about the reputations of the informants. In Study 2, we replicated these findings in a more controlled experiment in which 5- and 7-year-old American English-speaking children (N = 48, 27 girls) tried to convince an adult partner who proposed the item suggested by the informant with bad reputation. Thus, starting around age 5, and more reliably at age 7, children selectively rely on gossip in identifying trustworthy individuals in their collaborative reasoning with partners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Preschool children's evaluations of their own unjustified requests

To make a fair request, requesters should consider the perspective of the requestee and contrast his or her needs with their own needs. Making an unjustified request (e.g., requesting something we do not need but the requestee does need) can induce some negative feelings such as guilt. Here, we investigated whether making unjustified requests resulted in negative emotions in 3- and 5-year-old children. Participants (N = 83; 34 girls) requested resources that they did or did not need from an experimenter who either did or did not need them. Both age groups were slower and more hesitant to make an unjustified request (children did not need the sticker, but the experimenter did) and also showed lowered body posture when making an unjustified request compared with when making a justified request (children needed the sticker, but the experimenter did not). Three-year-olds showed more pronounced changes in their posture, whereas 5-year-olds' emotional expression was overall more blunted. Rather, older children relied more on verbal indirect utterances (e.g., "You've got lovely stickers"), as opposed to direct requests (e.g., "Can I have that sticker?"), when making unjustified requests. These results suggest that preschool children already apply impartial normative standards to their requests for help, account for the fairness of their requests, and consider the needs of others when requesting.

Children's interpretation of ambiguous pronouns based on prior discourse

In conversation, individual utterances are almost always ambiguous, with this ambiguity resolved by context and discourse history (common ground). One important cue for disambiguation is the topic under discussion with a particular partner (e.g., "want to pick?" means something different in a conversation with a bluegrass musician vs. with a book club partner). Here, we investigated 2- to 5-year-old American English-speaking children's (N = 131) reliance on conversational topics with specific partners to interpret ambiguous or novel words. In a tablet-based game, children heard a speaker consistently refer to objects from a category without mentioning the category itself. In Study 1, 3- and 4-year-olds interpreted the ambiguous pronoun "it" as referring to another member of the same category. In Study 2, only 4-year-olds interpreted the pronoun as referring to the implied category when talking to the same speaker but not when talking to a new speaker. Thus, children's conception of what constitutes common ground in discourse develops substantially between ages 2 and 5.

Preschoolers refer to direct and indirect evidence in their collaborative reasoning

Collaborative reasoning requires partners to evaluate options and the evidence for or against each option. We investigated whether preschoolers can explain why one option is best (direct reasons) and why the other option is not (indirect reasons), looking at both problems that have a correct answer and those that require choosing the better option. In Study 1, both age groups produced direct reasons equally frequently in both problems. However, 5-year-olds produced indirect reasons more often than 3-year-olds, especially when there was a correct answer. In Study 2 with a nonverbal task with a correct answer, 3-year-olds produced indirect reasons more often than in Study 1, although 5-year-olds' indirect reasons were more efficiently stated. These results demonstrate that even 3-year-olds, and even nonverbally, can point out to a partner a fact that constitutes a reason for them to arrive at a correct joint decision.

Young Children's Ability to Produce Valid and Relevant Counter-Arguments

In collaborative problem solving, children produce and evaluate arguments for proposals. We investigated whether 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 192) can produce and evaluate arguments against those arguments (i.e., counter-arguments). In Study 1, each child within a peer dyad was privately given a reason to prefer one over another solution to a task. One child, however, was given further information that would refute the reasoning of their partner. Five-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, identified and produced valid and relevant counter-arguments. In Study 2, 3-year-olds were given discourse training (discourse that contrasted valid and invalid counter-arguments) and then given the same problem-solving tasks. After training, 3-year-olds could also identify and produce valid and relevant counter-arguments. Thus, participating in discourse about reasons facilitates children's counter-argumentation.

Children's reasoning with peers and parents about moral dilemmas

Children encounter moral norms in several different social contexts. Often it is in hierarchically structured interactions with parents or other adults, but sometimes it is in more symmetrically structured interactions with peers. Our question was whether children's discussions of moral norms differ in these two contexts. Consequently, we had 4- and 6-year-old children (N = 72) reason about moral dilemmas with their mothers or peers. Both age groups opposed their partner's views and explicitly justified their own views more often with peers than with mothers. Mothers adapted their discussions to the cognitive levels of their children (e.g., focused more on the abstract moral norms with 6-year-old children than with 4-year-old children), but almost always with a pedagogical intent. Our results suggest that with mothers, moral judgments are experienced mostly as non-negotiable dictums, but with coequal peers they are experienced more as personal beliefs that can be actively negotiated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's meta-talk in their collaborative decision making with peers

In collaborative decision making, children must evaluate the evidence behind their respective claims and the rationality of their respective proposals with their partners. In the main study, 5- and 7-year-old peer dyads (N = 196) were presented with a novel animal. In the key condition, children in a dyad individually received conflicting information about what the animal needs (e.g., rocks vs. sand for food) from sources that differ in reliability (with first-hand vs. indirect evidence). Dyads in both age groups were able to reliably settle on the option with the best supporting evidence. Moreover, in making their decision, children, especially 7-year-olds, engaged in various kinds of meta-talk about the evidence and its validity. In a modified version of the key condition in Study 2, 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 120) interacted with a puppet who tried to convince children to change their minds by producing meta-talk. When the puppet insisted and produced meta-talk, 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, were more likely to change their minds if their information was unreliable. These results suggest that even preschoolers can engage in collaborative reasoning successfully, but the ability to reflect on the process by stepping back to jointly examine the evidence emerges only during the early school years.

Children's reasoning with peers in cooperative and competitive contexts

We report two studies that demonstrate how five- and seven-year-olds adapt their production of arguments to either a cooperative or a competitive context. Two games elicited agreements from peer dyads about placing animals on either of two halves of a playing field owned by either child. Children had to produce arguments to justify these decisions. Played in a competitive context that encouraged placing animals on one's own half, children's arguments showed a bias that was the result of withholding known arguments. In a cooperative context, children produced not only more arguments, but also more 'two-sided' arguments. Also, seven-year-olds demonstrated a more frequent and strategic use of arguments that specifically refuted decisions that would favour their peers. The results suggest that cooperative contexts provide a more motivating context for children to produce arguments. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Reasoning is a social skill that allows people to reach joint decisions. Preschoolers give reasons for their proposals in their peer conversations. By adolescence, children use sophisticated arguments (e.g., refutations and rebuttals). What the present study adds? Cooperation offers a more motivating context for children's argument production. Seven-year-olds are more strategic than five-year-olds in their reasoning with peers. Children's reasoning with others becomes more sophisticated after preschool years.

Syntactic and semantic coordination in finite complement-clause constructions: a diary-based case study

This study investigates the coordination of matrix and subordinate clauses within finite complement-clause constructions. The data come from diary and audio recordings which include the utterances produced by an American English-speaking child, L, between the ages 1;08 and 3;05. We extracted all the finite complement-clause constructions that L produced and compared the grammatical acceptability of these utterances with that of the simple sentences of the same length produced within the same two weeks and with that of the simple sentences containing the same verb produced within the same month. The results show that L is more likely to make syntactic errors in finite complement-clause constructions than she does in her simple sentences of the same length or with the same verb. This suggests that the errors are more likely to arise from the syntactic and semantic coordination of the two clauses rather than limitations in performance or lexical knowledge.