1-092 - Developing Prosociality in the First Year: Precursors and Early Forms of Helping, Sharing, and Empathy

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

During the first year, helpless neonates develop into helpful infants. By their first birthday, most infants hand back out-of-reach objects, share objects, and show distress at the distress of others (Dahl, 2015; Sommerville, Schmidt, Yum, & Burns, 2013; Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). These prosocial behaviors emerge in a rich social context, in which others respond to infants’ needs and initiatives from birth (Bernal, 1972; Tronick, 1989). Recently, several research teams have investigated the developmental origins of prosocial behaviors in social interactions during the first year. This international symposium brings together four of these teams. The presented research relies on a wide range of methods to investigate the origins of prosociality, including parental reports, structured observations, experiments, and longitudinal designs. The first talk presents research on early forms of instrumental helping in everyday life from 3 to 12 months of age. The second talk presents findings from an experimental study of how parental scaffolding and empathy influence infant sharing in the first year. The third presentation deals with the origins of infants’ prosocial behaviors toward a person in distress in the first year. The last presentation will report findings from naturalistic and experimental research of whether adult scaffolding increase helping among young infants. Together, the presentations will shed light on the developmental origins of infants’ prosocial behaviors during the first year and highlight new methods and questions for future research on how infants begin to promote the welfare of others.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chairs

• Stuart Hammond, University of Ottawa

• Audun Dahl, University of California Santa Cruz

Individual Presentations

• Everyday helping in the first year: Infants’ early prosocial behavior in the context of care - Presenting Author: Stuart Hammond, University of Ottawa; Non-Presenting Author: Victoria L. Edwards, University of Ottawa; Non-Presenting Author: Ann Hérard, University of Ottawa; Non-Presenting Author: Anisa Yan, University of Ottawa; Non-Presenting Author: Madison MacLachlan, University of Ottawa

• Precursors of prosociality: The role of experience in the development of sharing behaviors - Presenting Author: Jessica Sommerville, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Kelsey Lucca, University of Washington

• Prosocial Behavior Towards Another in Distress at 12-Months: Early Child and Maternal Predictors - Presenting Author: Maayan Davidov, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Non-Presenting Author: Yael Paz, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Non-Presenting Author: Tal Orlitsky, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Non-Presenting Author: Ronit Roth-Hanania, Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College; Non-Presenting Author: Florina Uzefovsky, Ben Gurion University; Non-Presenting Author: Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Scaffolding the Emergence of Infant Helping: Experimental and Naturalistic Data - Presenting Author: Audun Dahl, University of California Santa Cruz; Non-Presenting Author: Caitlyn Grubb, Colorado State University; Non-Presenting Author: Mary Taylor Goeltz, University of California, Santa Cruz; Non-Presenting Author: Celia Brownell, University of Pittsburgh