Poster #127 - Links between Toddlers’ Prosocial Behaviors, Inhibitory Control, and Maternal Autonomy Support

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Before age 2, toddlers demonstrate the ability to engage in a variety of prosocial behaviors. They show skill in instrumental helping (assisting others with simple goals), sharing (giving up resources on behalf of others in need), and empathic helping (comforting others in emotional distress) (Svetolva et al., 2010; Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). Researchers know little about how these earliest skills develop and how parenting impacts early prosocial behavior. The current study examined maternal autonomy support as an aspect of socialization that may relate to early prosocial behaviors by fostering feelings of competence (Grolnick & Ryan, 1991). Furthermore, autonomy support may promote children’s inhibitory control by teaching children regulation strategies. Inhibitory control may also predict prosocial behavior because it allows children to suppress their dominant responses in favor of more appropriate social responses (Rothbart, 2007). It was hypothesized that maternal autonomy support would positively predict instrumental helping, sharing, and empathic helping. It was also predicted that inhibitory control would mediate the link between autonomy support and sharing, as well as empathic helping, but not instrumental helping, because toddlers are intrinsically motivated to engage in this type of helping (Ulber et al., 2016).

Seventy-six mother-child dyads participated in the current study when children were 23 to 25 months old. Maternal autonomy support was observed during a puzzle task and was coded on a 1-5 scale for the extent to which mothers adapted the task to children’s skill level and pace (5 = highly autonomy supportive) (Whipple et al., 2011). Children’s inhibitory control was observed during tasks in which children were asked to refrain from eating a snack or looking at a gift while it was being wrapped (Kochanska et al., 2000). Children’s compliance with instructions was coded and scores were standardized and averaged into an overall inhibitory control score. Children also took part in 4 instrumental helping tasks in which they could help an experimenter complete a simple goal (Warneken & Tomasello, 2006), 2 sharing tasks in which children could share food or toys with an experimenter, and 2 empathic helping tasks in which children could retrieve a comforting item for an experimenter experiencing distress (Svetlova et al., 2010). Children were given a proportion score for the instances in which they acted prosocially on each type of task.

Bivariate correlations can be found in Table 1. Contrary to hypotheses, autonomy support was not associated with any type of prosocial behavior. However, autonomy support was positively associated with children’s inhibitory control. Inhibitory control was positively associated with sharing and empathic helping, but was not associated with instrumental helping. Mediation models were constructed to test the potential indirect association of autonomy support and toddlers’ sharing and empathic helping through inhibitory control. Autonomy support did not indirectly predict empathic helping through inhibitory control. However, autonomy support did indirectly predict toddlers’ sharing through inhibitory control (see Figure 1). These findings demonstrate a link between socialization and early sharing behaviors, and highlight that inhibitory control may serve as mechanism by which sharing occurs.

Authors

• Erin Karahuta, Lehigh University
  Presenting Author

• Deborah June Laible, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author