Three-year-olds' understanding of the consequences of joint commitments

No external funding has supported the current work.Here we investigate the extent of children's understanding of the joint commitments inherent in joint activities. Three-year-old children either made a joint commitment to assemble a puzzle with a puppet partner, or else the child and puppet each assembled their own puzzle. Afterwards, children who had made the joint commitment were more likely to stop and wait for their partner on their way to fetch something, more likely to spontaneously help their partner when needed, and more likely to take over their partner's role when necessary. There was no clear difference in children's tendency to tattle on their partner's cheating behavior or their tendency to distribute rewards equally at the end. It thus appears that by 3 years of age making a joint commitment to act together with others is beginning to engender in children a "we"-intentionality which holds across at least most of the process of the joint activity until the shared goal is achieved, and which withstands at least some of the perturbations to the joint activity children experience.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Three-year-olds' understanding of the consequences of joint commitments

Here we investigate the extent of children's understanding of the joint commitments inherent in joint activities. Three-year-old children either made a joint commitment to assemble a puzzle with a puppet partner, or else the child and puppet each assembled their own puzzle. Afterwards, children who had made the joint commitment were more likely to stop and wait for their partner on their way to fetch something, more likely to spontaneously help their partner when needed, and more likely to take over their partner's role when necessary. There was no clear difference in children's tendency to tattle on their partner's cheating behavior or their tendency to distribute rewards equally at the end. It thus appears that by 3 years of age making a joint commitment to act together with others is beginning to engender in children a "we"-intentionality which holds across at least most of the process of the joint activity until the shared goal is achieved, and which withstands at least some of the perturbations to the joint activity children experience.</p

One-year-olds' understanding of nonverbal gestures directed to a third person

We investigated whether infants comprehend others' nonverbal Communicative intentions directed to a third person, in an 'over-hearing' context. An experimenter addressed an assistant and indicated a hidden toy's location by either gazing ostensively or pointing to the location for her. In a Matched control condition, the experimenter performed similar behaviors (absent-minded gazing and extended index finger) but did not Communicate ostensively with the assistant. Infants could then search for the toy. Eighteen-month-old infants were skillful in using both communicative Cues to find the hidden object, whereas 14-month-olds performed above chance only with the pointing cue. Neither age group performed above chance in the control condition. This study thus shows that by 14-18 months of age, infants are beginning to monitor and comprehend some aspects of third party interactions. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.</p

One-year-olds' understanding of nonverbal gestures directed to a third person

We investigated whether infants comprehend others' nonverbal Communicative intentions directed to a third person, in an 'over-hearing' context. An experimenter addressed an assistant and indicated a hidden toy's location by either gazing ostensively or pointing to the location for her. In a Matched control condition, the experimenter performed similar behaviors (absent-minded gazing and extended index finger) but did not Communicate ostensively with the assistant. Infants could then search for the toy. Eighteen-month-old infants were skillful in using both communicative Cues to find the hidden object, whereas 14-month-olds performed above chance only with the pointing cue. Neither age group performed above chance in the control condition. This study thus shows that by 14-18 months of age, infants are beginning to monitor and comprehend some aspects of third party interactions. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.</p

Young Children's Understanding of Joint Commitments

When adults make a joint commitment to act together, they feel an obligation to their partner. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether young children also understand joint commitments to act together. In the first study, when an adult orchestrated with the child a joint commitment to play a game together and the broke off from their joint activity, 3-year-olds (n = 24) reacted to the break significantly more often (e.g., by trying to re-engage her or waiting for her to restart playing) than when she simply joined the child's individual activity unbidden. Two-year-olds (n = 24) did not differentiate between these 2 situations. In the second study, 3- and 4-year-old children (n = 30 at each age) were enticed away from their activity with an adult. Children acknowledged their leaving (e.g., by looking to the adult or handing her the object they had been playing with) significantly more often when they had made a joint commitment to act together than when they had not. By 3 years of age, children thus recognize both when an adult is committed and when they themselves are committed to a joint activity.</p