Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals
<jats:p> Preschoolers are sensitive to differences in individuals’ access to external resources (e.g., tools) in division of labor tasks. However, little is known about whether children consider differences in individuals’ internal resources (e.g., abilities) and whether children can flexibly...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MIT Press - Journals
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135072 |
| _version_ | 1826211864872222720 |
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| author | Magid, Rachel W DePascale, Mary Schulz, Laura E |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Magid, Rachel W DePascale, Mary Schulz, Laura E |
| author_sort | Magid, Rachel W |
| collection | MIT |
| description | <jats:p> Preschoolers are sensitive to differences in individuals’ access to external resources (e.g., tools) in division of labor tasks. However, little is known about whether children consider differences in individuals’ internal resources (e.g., abilities) and whether children can flexibly allocate roles across different goal contexts. Critically, factors that are relevant to role allocation in collaborative contexts may be irrelevant in competitive and prosocial ones. In three preregistered experiments, we found that 4- and 5-year-olds (mean: 54 months; range: 42–66 months; N = 132) used age differences to infer relative ability and appropriately allocate the harder and easier of two tasks in a dyadic cooperative interaction (Experiment 1), and appropriately ignored relative ability in competitive (Experiment 2) and prosocial (Experiment 3) contexts, instead assigning others the harder and easier roles, respectively. Thus, 3-and-a-half- to 5-year-olds evaluate their own abilities relative to others and effectively allocate roles to achieve diverse goals. </jats:p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:12:21Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/135072 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:12:21Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | MIT Press - Journals |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1350722023-03-15T17:24:39Z Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals Magid, Rachel W DePascale, Mary Schulz, Laura E Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences <jats:p> Preschoolers are sensitive to differences in individuals’ access to external resources (e.g., tools) in division of labor tasks. However, little is known about whether children consider differences in individuals’ internal resources (e.g., abilities) and whether children can flexibly allocate roles across different goal contexts. Critically, factors that are relevant to role allocation in collaborative contexts may be irrelevant in competitive and prosocial ones. In three preregistered experiments, we found that 4- and 5-year-olds (mean: 54 months; range: 42–66 months; N = 132) used age differences to infer relative ability and appropriately allocate the harder and easier of two tasks in a dyadic cooperative interaction (Experiment 1), and appropriately ignored relative ability in competitive (Experiment 2) and prosocial (Experiment 3) contexts, instead assigning others the harder and easier roles, respectively. Thus, 3-and-a-half- to 5-year-olds evaluate their own abilities relative to others and effectively allocate roles to achieve diverse goals. </jats:p> 2021-10-27T20:10:36Z 2021-10-27T20:10:36Z 2018 2019-10-04T11:10:05Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135072 en 10.1162/OPMI_A_00019 Open Mind Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf MIT Press - Journals MIT Press |
| spellingShingle | Magid, Rachel W DePascale, Mary Schulz, Laura E Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals |
| title | Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals |
| title_full | Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals |
| title_fullStr | Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals |
| title_full_unstemmed | Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals |
| title_short | Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative, Competitive, and Prosocial Goals |
| title_sort | four and 5 year olds infer differences in relative ability and appropriately allocate roles to achieve cooperative competitive and prosocial goals |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135072 |
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