Poster #35 - Discrete versus Continuous Perceptual Features Impact Children’s Moral Evaluations of Others

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Young children are remarkable moral evaluators. Although preschoolers are able to use a wide set of information to make social evaluations of others (e.g., intent; outcome; harm; social status), there are also limits to the information children use. For example, 4-year-old children show difficulty using proportional information when judging the niceness of characters involved in resource distribution (McCrink, Bloom, & Santos, 2007). Additionally, 5-year-olds were able to use both absolute and proportional amount shared, but tended to rely on absolute amount when it conflicted with proportion (McCrink et al., 2007). Whether this pattern of behavior is because of children’s social reasoning per se, or rather more general difficulties in proportional reasoning, is an open question. Research on proportional reasoning outside the social domain suggests that even young children are able to engage in proportional reasoning when information is presented continuously (e.g., a single shape). However, when the quantity is presented discretely (i.e., divided into pieces) children attend to number instead of proportion, resulting in systematic errors (e.g., that 3/4 < 5/9 because 3<5; Boyer, Levine & Huttenlocher, 2008; Hurst & Cordes, 2018).
In the current study, we investigated whether the use of discrete vs. continuous representations of resources would impact children’s social evaluations. Children were introduced to two characters who had some resources (a blue rectangle of varying size). Each character gave some of their resource to a third character. Children were asked which of the two characters was nicer. On each trial, we varied the information that was available: (1) the proportion shared was equal, but the absolute amount varied, (2) the absolute amount shared was equal, but proportion varied, or (3) one character shared absolutely more, but proportionally less and vice versa (adapted from McCrink et al., 2007). Importantly, children were randomly assigned to either perceptually discrete vs. continuous representations.
The study is preregistered for a final sample of 35 4- and 5-year-old children per condition (aspredicted.org #9759); however, preliminary analyses on a smaller sample (n continuous=26, n discrete=27) suggest that both the availability of different information and the visual presentation do impact children’s social evaluations in the hypothesized way (see Figure 1).
In line with prior work (McCrink et al., 2007), children generally attended to absolute amount. However, as predicted, when amount was pitted against proportion, children were significantly more likely to attend to proportion when resources were presented continuously vs. discretely, t(51)=3.3, p=0.002, d=0.91. Additionally, children’s performance did not significantly differ on continuous vs. discrete trials when the proportion shared was equal, but absolute amount varied, t(51)=1.6, p=0.11, d=0.45, or when the absolute amount shared was equal, but proportion varied, t(51)=1.4, p=0.17, d=0.39, (i.e., when there was no conflict between proportion and absolute amount).
Thus, the perceptual differences between continuous and discrete quantities did impact performance, in particular when there was competition between absolute and proportional information. These results suggest that children’s tendency to rely on absolute amount over proportional information may be, at least in part, due to more general difficulties engaging in proportional reasoning.

Authors

• Michelle A Hurst, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Alex Shaw, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nadia Chernyak, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan C. Levine, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author