Proportional Reasoning Predicts Reasoning about Disadvantage in Preschool-Aged Children

• In Event: Advances in Social Cognition: Children’s Inferences in a Complex Social World

Abstract

One of the most pernicious aspects of inequality is the inability to recognize and adjust for unequal starting opportunity. When making social evaluations, young children tend to display wealth biases, and also evaluate someone who shares 2 of 6 candies as being less nice than someone who gives 1 of 2, despite the fact that the latter individual endured a greater proportional sacrifice (McCrink et al., 2010). Prior work has suggested that this “error” occurs because children have trouble taking into account one’s relative (dis)advantage when evaluating their subsequent actions.

We explored the development of reasoning about disadvantage in relation to two cognitive abilities: cognitive control and non-symbolic proportional reasoning. Thirty (18 female; n = 720 total observations; data collection ongoing) 5-8-year-olds (Mean age = 6.321; SD = 0.848) completed a social evaluation task (modeled after McCrink et al., 2010) in which they viewed two people give away items (sandwiches or juice), across four trial types: a baseline trial in which both people had the same number of items to begin with, but gave away different amounts; a proportionally equal trial in which both people started with different numbers of items but gave away equal proportional amounts (e.g., person A gives away 1/2 items; person B gives away 2/4); an absolutely equal trial in which both people started with different numbers of items but give away the same absolute amount (e.g., person A gives away 2/4; person B gives away 2/8), and a conflict trial in which one person gives away a larger absolute amount but a smaller proportion (e.g., person A gives away 2/4; person B gives away 4/12). During each trial, we asked three social evaluation questions about which person was (1) nicer, (2) better at sharing, and (3) the one they’d rather be friends with. Our critical question was whether children would select the poorer agent (one with fewer starting resources).

Following the social evaluation task, children completed three cognitive assessments: cognitive control task (Lagatutta et al., 2011); spontaneous focus on proportion task, in which children were shown a pie-chart (e.g., ¾) and asked to choose a match from a choice of either a proportion match (e.g., 6/8) or a numerical match (e.g., 3/10; Hurst & Cordes, 2019), and proportion comparison task in which children were shown two spinners, and asked which was better.
The results showed that both proportional reasoning tasks significantly predicted likelihood of choosing the poorer agent: proportion equivalence matching task, X2(1) = 14.666, p < 0.001; proportion comparison task, X2(1) = 11.739, p < 0.001. Moreover, both significantly mediated age-related changes in likelihood of selecting the poorer agent, Sobel test z’s > 3.11, p’s < 0.002. In contrast, cognitive control did not exert any significant effects. Thus, children with better proportional reasoning skills were more likely to account for unequal starting opportunities by preferring the agent with fewer starting resources.

The results point to an important cognitive ability that underpins both age-related and individual differences in reasoning about equity during social evaluation.

Authors

• Nadia Chernyak, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Rui Zhang, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michelle A Hurst, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author