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Toddlers map the word ‘good’ to helping agents, but not to fair distributors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2018

Laura FRANCHIN ,
Federica SAVAZZI ,
Isabel Cristina NEIRA-GUTIERREZ  and
Luca SURIAN
Laura FRANCHIN*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Italy
Federica SAVAZZI
Affiliation:
IRCCS, Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, ONLUS, Milano, Italy
Isabel Cristina NEIRA-GUTIERREZ
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Italy
Luca SURIAN
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Italy
*
*Corresponding author: Laura Franchin, Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 31, 38068 Rovereto (Trento), Italy. Tel: +390464808633; E-mail: laura.franchin@unitn.it
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Abstract

Infants begin to understand some of the meanings of the adjective good at around thirteen months, but it is not clear when they start to map it to concepts in the moral domain. We investigated infants’ and toddlers’ knowledge of good in the domains of help and fairness. Participants at 20 and 30 months were shown computer animations involving helpful and hindering agents, or agents who performed fair or unfair distributions, and were asked to “pick the good one”. Toddlers at 30 months took good as referring to helping, but not to the fair agents. However, when asked “to pick one”, they choose the fair distributor. These findings suggest that by 30 months toddlers have started to map good to some socio-moral features, such as a helping disposition, but not to fairness in distributive actions.

Keywords

goodhelpfairnessmoral developmentinfancy
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 98 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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