Talking about sharing: Children’s narratives in early and middle childhood

• In Event: The Development of Prosocial Behavior in Early Childhood

Abstract

Children encounter opportunities to share daily. They narrate these experiences, in an attempt to reason their choices, connect them to their inner world and form elaborate representations of experiences (Recchia, Wainryb, Bourne, & Pasupathi, 2015). Studies mostly investigated children's narratives of moral transgressions (e.g., Wainryb, Brehl, Matwin, Sokol, & Hammond, 2005), while some investigated prosocial behavior (Recchia et al., 2015). Moreover, such studies typically focused on children during middle childhood and adolescence.
The current study investigates the context of sharing, as this context offers an everyday moral dilemma to young children. We tested two alternative solutions to that dilemma, to share or not to share. Moreover, we included a group substantially younger that those studied before. The sample was comprised of a young group (Early childhood N = 46, 4-6-year-old, Mean = 5.49, SD = .67, 36% female), and an older group (Middle childhood N = 145, 8-12 year olds, Mean = 10.15, SD = 1.21, 53% female). A coding scheme was built on the basis of past theories of prosocial behavior (e.g. Carlo, 2012). Children’s narratives were coded by trained coders, reaching adequate inter-judge reliabilities.
First, the meaning of the same themes was more rudimentary in the younger, versus older sample. For example, young children referred to fairness by mentioning equal distribution between children, without mentioning of the fairness concept: “I gave each a cup”, “There were many so I gave him some”. Older children were more explicit: “…It makes everyone happy that they are all equal”, “…it is better for her to get it and not me, because it is not fair”. Such differences in the understanding of sharing by children in early versus middle childhood were found in additional themes, such as reference to the needs of others, and social-prescriptions of sharing.
Second, differences were found between age-groups in frequency of the themes (Figure 1). In their sharing narratives, young children were more likely to refer to authority and to turn taking or mutuality. Older children were more likely to refer to the needs of others. In their not-sharing narratives, young children were mostly unelaborated, merely stating refusal to share, while some refered to authority figures. Older children were more likely to refer to needs of the self, and refusal do adhere to another’s request. In their sharing stories, young children were more likely than in their not-sharing stories, to refer to the social prescription of sharing (it is nice to share), to fairness, and to turn taking or mutuality. These themes were equally present in the sharing and not-sharing stories of older children, but those were more likely to refer to the request of others when they did not share, versus when they did (Table 1).
The presentation will offer new insights regarding the developmental aspects of the concept of sharing from the perspectives of young children.

Authors

• Ella Daniel, Tel Aviv University
  Presenting Author

• Dorit Aram, Tel Aviv University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Keren Ziv
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yael Asayas Varon, Tel Aviv University
  Non-Presenting Author