Poster #106 - Factors that Influence Prosocial Development: Theory of Mind, Neural Responses to Emotional Faces, and Parent's Prosocial Tendencies

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

What supports the development of prosociality (helping, sharing, comforting)? Theory/research discusses the importance of social-cognitive skills, like Theory of Mind (ToM), to assess others' mental states to best determine how and when to help/share/comfort those in need. However, empirical relations between ToM and prosocial behaviors are not straightforward: better ToM does not always predict increased prosociality (Imuta, et al., 2016), and sometimes predicts antisocial/aggressive behaviors (O’Toole et al., 2017). Other factors must therefore be necessary to connect children’s social-cognitive skills (i.e., ToM) to their real-world prosocial behavior. The present study investigates two such factors: parents' prosocial tendencies, and children's emotion-processing neural system, which may work both separately and together to support children's prosociality.
Perceptual processes are theorized as a central contributor to prosociality, given they support extraction of relevant information about peoples’ facial expressions, which communicate information for decision-making in prosocial behaviors (Paulus, 2014). Indeed, a child with an especially sensitive face-processing neural system may be better equipped to assess others’ emotions and interpret their internal mental states (Hojat et al., 2001) to support prosocial actions. Thus, the neural system for face/emotion perception may interact with children’s ToM to support prosocial development.
Likewise, parents' prosocial tendencies may also support children's prosociality. Parents’ frequent engagement in prosocial acts can encourage children’s prosocial behavior (Hastings et al., 2007), and children who can better decipher the mental states of their parents and the recipient of their parents’ prosociality may be more influenced by witnessing these prosocial acts. Thus, parents’ prosociality may also interact with children’s ToM to influence prosocial development.
Given that the face-processing neural system is shaped by early experiences within the caregiving environment (Taylor-Colls & Fearon, 2015), parents’ prosocial tendencies may tune children’s social-perceptual neural system. A child with a highly sensitive emotion-perception neural system may be more influenced by perceiving their parents' prosocial behaviors. Thus, parents’ prosociality may interact with both children’s emotion-processing neural system and ToM to influence children’s prosocial development.
Here, we test the hypotheses that children’s emotion-processing neural system and parents’ prosocial tendencies, both separately and in conjunction, serve as moderators to connect children's ToM skills to their prosociality. We are examining 3- to 5-year-old typically developing children’s neural responses to passively viewing happy, angry, fearful, and neutral faces (targeting the N170 event-related potential, a negative deflection that occurs in response to face- and emotion-related stimuli, Batty & Taylor, 2006), children’s ToM (assessed with standard behavioral tasks, e.g., Wellman & Liu, 2004), children’s prosociality (Parent Ratings of Prosocial Behaviors Questionnaire, Gross et al., 2015), and parents’ prosociality (adult Prosocial Personality Questionnaire; Penner et al., 1995).
Preliminary results (N = 31) demonstrate that, in line with hypotheses, both parent prosociality and children’s neural responses to emotional faces each separately moderated relations between children’s ToM and children’s prosociality (Figure 1). Additionally, in a double moderation model, children’s more advanced ToM, a more prosocial parent, and a neural system more specialized for emotion processing (smaller N170 mean amplitude to emotional faces) all combined to predict children’s increased prosociality (Figure 2).

Authors

• Zoe Pestana, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• MJ Heise, University of California - Davis

• Ruohan Xia, University of California - Davis

• Lindsay Caroline Bowman, University of California - Davis