Four- and 5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in Relative
Ability and Appropriately Allocate Roles to
Achieve Cooperative, Competitive,
and Prosocial Goals
Rachel W. Magid1, Mary DePascale1,2, and Laura E. Schulz1
1Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Istituto di Tecnologia del Massachussetts
2Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland
a n o p e n a c c e s s
j o u r n a l
Keywords: cooperation, self/other knowledge, planning
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
ABSTRACT
Preschoolers are sensitive to differences in individuals’ access to external resources (per esempio.,
tools) in division of labor tasks. Tuttavia, little is known about whether children consider
differences in individuals’ internal resources (per esempio., 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) contesti, instead assigning others the harder and easier roles, rispettivamente.
Così, 3-and-a-half- to 5-year-olds evaluate their own abilities relative to others and effectively
allocate roles to achieve diverse goals.
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
INTRODUCTION
Cooperation is a foundation of human culture and cognition, observed in diverse activities
including governing, hunting, fishing, building, and playing (Brownell, Ramani, & Zerwas,
2006; Rogoff, 1990; Tomasello, 1999). Young children begin cooperating in problem solving
and social games by their first birthday, and the sophistication of their cooperative interactions
increases over the first few years of life (per esempio., Brownell & Carriger, 1990; Warneken, Chen,
& Tomasello, 2010; for review, see Warneken, 2017). Children cooperate by sharing food and
toys (Brownell, Svetlova, & Nichols, 2009; Hay, 1979), pointing to inform others (Liszkowski,
Carpenter, Striano, & Tomasello, 2006; Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2008), and assist-
ing in goal-directed actions (Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). Children also appear to expect
cooperation, protesting when adults disengage from cooperative interactions (Ross & Lollis,
1987).
Across species, the most sophisticated forms of cooperation involve collaboration, Quando
individuals adjust their behavior to accomplish a goal (Boesch & Boesch, 1989). Children as
young as 3-and-a-half flexibly divide labor by coordinating on tasks involving different sub-
goals (Ashley & Tomasello, 1998; Fletcher, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2012). Inoltre, older
preschoolers divide labor with respect to available resources: when the participant has both
tools needed to achieve a joint goal while their partner has only one, 5-year-olds (though not
Citation: Magid, R. W., DePascale, M.,
& Schulz, l. E. (2018). Four- E
5-Year-Olds Infer Differences in
Relative Ability and Appropriately
Allocate Roles to Achieve Cooperative,
Competitive, and Prosocial Goals.
Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive
Scienza, 2(2), 72–85. https://doi.org/
10.1162/opmi_a_00019
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00019
Supplemental Materials:
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00019
https://osf.io/aq246/
Received: 12 Gennaio 2018
Accepted: 14 agosto 2018
Competing Interests: None of the
authors have any competing interests.
Corresponding Author:
Rachel Magid
rwmagid@mit.edu
Copyright: © 2018
Istituto di Tecnologia del Massachussetts
Pubblicato sotto Creative Commons
Attribuzione 4.0 Internazionale
(CC BY 4.0) licenza
The MIT Press
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
3-year-olds) appropriately delegate to their partner the task corresponding to their partner’s
tool (Warneken, Steinwender, Hamann, & Tomasello, 2014).
In such cases, both partners are, in principle, equally capable of performing either role.
Tuttavia, people differ not just with respect to the availability of external resources, but also
with respect to their internal resources, including motivation, physical ability, knowledge, E
intelligence.
Preschoolers are sensitive to such differences, selectively choosing to associate with
and learn from more trustworthy, competent, and knowledgeable agents (per esempio., Jara-Ettinger,
Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2015; Koenig, Clément, & Harris, 2004; Koenig & Jaswal, 2011; Kushnir,
Vredenburgh, & Schneider, 2013) and choosing to help and instruct more naive peers (Johnson-
Pynn & Nisbet, 2002; Ziv & Frye, 2004; see Corriveau, Ronfard, & Cui, 2017, for review). Three-
to 5-year-olds also understand cognitive division of labor, recognizing that people specialize
in different areas and may have more expertise in some areas than others (Danovitch & Keil,
2004; Lutz & Keil, 2002).
The degree to which children accurately represent their own strengths and weaknesses
is more controversial. Work suggests that preschoolers are sometimes (excessively) optimistic
about their abilities (Burhans & Dweck, 1995; Schneider, 1998). Tuttavia, other research sug-
gests that children as young as three engage in social comparison, evaluating their perfor-
mance relative to peers’ (Butler, 1998; Magid & Schulz, 2015; Rhodes & Brickman, 2008), E
can accurately assess whether they are good or bad at familiar tasks (Cimpian, Mu, & Erickson,
2012; Heyman, Dweck, & Cain, 1992). To the degree that children are sensitive to relative dif-
ferences in ability (even if they are poor judges of their abilities in an absolute sense), they might
recognize that they should take the easier task if they believe their partner is more capable,
and the harder task if they believe their partner is less capable.
Tuttavia, allocating roles based on ability is only rational in collaborative tasks where
both parties must succeed in order to achieve the goal. If the goal of the task is to optimize
one’s own chances of success, it makes sense to disregard relative differences in abilities
and always assign the easier role to oneself and the harder task to one’s opponent. Contro-
versely, if the goal is prosocial—optimizing the other person’s probability of success—it makes
sense to assign the other person the easier of two tasks regardless of ability, especially if the
decision maker can do so at no cost to themselves. Even very young children are sensitive
to a diverse range of goals (Buresh & Woodward, 2007; Carpenter, Call, & Tomasello, 2002;
DiYanni, Nini, & Rheel, 2011; Meltzoff, 1995), and flexibly adopt competitive, cooperative,
or prosocial goals depending on the context (see Green & Rechis, 2006, and Warneken, 2015,
for reviews). Tuttavia, previous research has not asked whether preschoolers use differences
in the goal context to make different decisions about the role other individuals should play.
Critically, an adept social agent who has the power to allocate roles should consider relative
abilities in collaborative contexts when maximizing each participant’s chance of success is
beneficial, but disregard these differences in competitive and prosocial contexts, where role
assignment should be governed only by the relative difficulty of the tasks themselves. To the
degree that preschoolers are sensitive to this, they should show unique patterns of role alloca-
tion depending on whether they are trying to achieve collaborative, competitivo, or prosocial
goals.
We tested the flexibility of children’s role assignment across these different contexts by
introducing participants to two carnival-style games: a ring toss and ball toss. Each game had
an easy and a hard version (Figura 1). Individual participants received the easy version of one
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
73
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Figura 1. Each participant saw only one setup (top or bottom). Participants practiced each game
before allocating roles. The hard and easy labels are for explanatory purposes; the tasks were not
identified as such for the children.
game and the hard version of the other. Children were not told that one game was “easy”
and the other “hard” but had the opportunity to try each game and judge for themselves.
Participants were then told that another child was going to come to play with them. They were
told that they had to choose one game for their partner, and one for themselves, and that if
they both succeeded (cioè., getting a ring on a pole and a ball in the box) a special machine
would activate.
Generalmente, preschoolers expect that children their own age will know more than in-
fants and less than adults (Taylor, Cartwright, & Bowden, 1991; see also Jaswal & Neely, 2006;
VanderBorght & Jaswal, 2009). We do not know of any research looking at whether children
can use smaller age differences to infer relative abilities, but given the anecdotal prevalence of
age/ability attributions in everyday peer and sibling interactions, we assumed that they would.
Thus in one condition, children were told that the partner would be younger than themselves
(Younger Other condition); in the other condition they were told that their partner would be
older (Older Other condition).
In a cooperative context, we could observe a number of possible results. If children
are poor judges of task difficulty, they should choose at chance. If children judge the tasks
accurately, but try only to maximize their own chances of success (and ignore the collaborative
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
74
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
nature of the task), they should choose the easy task for themselves and the hard task for
their partner in both conditions. Conversely, if children tend to overestimate themselves (O
underestimate their partner’s ability), they should choose the hard task for themselves and
the easy task for their partner in both conditions. Tuttavia, if children’s role allocation in
cooperative tasks is sensitive to relative ability (as indexed by age), they should choose the
easier game for their partner if their partner is younger, and the easier game for themselves if
their partner is older.
In the competitive context, we could also observe a number of different results. In partic-
ular, young children have a strong preference for equitable distributions of resources (Baumard,
Mascaro, & Chevallier, 2012; Olson & Spelke, 2008; Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2012;
Schmidt & Sommerville, 2011; Shaw, DeScioli, & Olson, 2012). Così, 4-year-olds might try
to “level the playing field” and assign younger children the easier game and older children
the harder game in the competitive context. Some support for this comes from studies on chil-
dren’s sensitivity to “procedural justice,” showing that 5-year-olds in triadic interactions resist
the inequitable allocation of rewards given unfair, but not fair procedures (per esempio., unevenly versus
evenly weighted spinners; Grocke, Rossano, & Tomasello, 2015). Tuttavia, 4-year-olds were
unable to complete the tasks (Grocke et al., 2015), and considerable research suggests that
when children themselves are advantaged and acting independently in first-person contexts,
they act in accordance with self-interest rather than equity until age seven or eight (Blake &
McAuliffe, 2011; Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008; Shaw & Olson, 2012; Smith, Blake, &
Harris, 2013; see also Schmidt, Svetlova, Johe, & Tomasello, 2015, for similarly protracted de-
velopment of children’s understanding of legitimate and illegitimate procedures for resource
distribution). Così, here we predict that in competitive contexts, children will act in accor-
dance with self-interest and assign the harder game to their opponent, regardless of whether
their opponent is younger or older.
Finalmente, considerable research suggests that very young children both act prosocially
themselves and prefer those who do the same (Behne, Carpenter, Call, & Tomasello, 2005;
Hamlin, 2013; Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007; Jara-Ettinger, Tenenbaum et al., 2015; Schmidt
& Sommerville, 2011; Van de Vondervoort & Hamlin, 2016; Warneken & Tomasello, 2006,
2007, 2009). To our knowledge, Tuttavia, no studies have looked at role allocation as a
form of prosocial behavior. Given growing evidence for young children’s understanding of the
costs and rewards of goal-directed actions (Jara-Ettinger, Gweon, Schulz, & Tenenbaum, 2016),
we predict that when the goal is to maximize others’ rewards, children will assign the easier
game to the other child, independent of her relative age. To test these predictions, in Experi-
ment 1, we look at how children allocate roles given collaborative goals; in Experiment 2,
we look at how children allocate roles given competitive goals; and in Experiment 3, we look
at how children allocate roles given prosocial goals.
We tested 3-and-a-half- to 5-and-a-half-year-old children because previous work has
shown that by 3 and a half, children can switch from one role in a collaborative interaction
to another role (Ashley & Tomasello, 1998), but only 5-year-olds, not 3-year-olds, can flexibly
reason about what role to adopt in a cooperative interaction based on individuals’ differential
resources (Warneken et al., 2014). Thus this age range spanned a potential window of devel-
opmental change in children’s understanding of role allocation. Tuttavia, we expected the task
in the current study would be more comparable to the role-switching task than the resource
allocation task, insofar as here children do not need to integrate an understanding of role
allocation with an understanding of the causal role of different tools. All children were told
that the fictitious partner was a 2-year-old in the Younger Other condition and a 6-year-old
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
75
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
in the Older Other condition so that there would be at least a half-year gap between the age
of the youngest and oldest participant and the fictitious older child.
EXPERIMENT 1
Method
Procedures and our analysis plan for all experiments were preregistered on the
Participants
Open Science Framework (Magid, Schulz, & DePascale, 2018). We assumed a large effect size
(Cramer’s V = .50), and a power analysis indicated that 44 participants were required to
reach a power of .90. All participants were recruited from an urban children’s museum and
randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Younger Other or Older Other. Forty-four children
(mean age = 54 months; range 43–66 months) were included in the final sample (n = 22 per
condition). Ten additional children did not pass the inclusion criteria (see Procedure section
for details). An additional five children were tested but excluded due to parental interference
(n = 3) or failing to provide a response to the test question (n = 2).
A felt mat was placed on the floor for game play. Children played two games: a ring
Materials
toss and a ball toss. Each game had two versions—one easier (Easy Rings, Easy Balls) and one
harder (Hard Rings, Hard Balls). See the Supplemental Materials (Magid, DePascale, & Schulz,
2018) for details.
Half the participants played the Easy Rings and Hard Balls, half the Hard Rings and
Easy Balls. Laminated cards showed photographs of an Older Other (a 6-year-old) or Younger
Other (a 2-year-old) child. A laminated card with the word “You” printed in the center was
used to represent the participant. A remote-controlled LED light machine (12 × 13 × 12 cm)
was used for the joint task.
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board. All children were
Procedure
tested individually in a quiet room at a children’s museum. Children were shown two games
(either Easy Rings and Hard Balls, or Hard Rings and Easy Balls) and given the chance to prac-
tice each game four times. The game played first (rings or balls), the location of each game
(right or left), and the version of each game (easy or hard) were counterbalanced across partic-
ipants. After children practiced, the experimenter introduced the light machine and explained
that players of the two games could work together to achieve a single joint goal: if the ball
went in the box and a ring went on the pole at the same time, then the machine would light
su. The experimenter introduced the participant to the fictional other child, named Jamie, by
explaining that she had talked with the other child earlier that day and that he or she wanted
to come play the games together with the participant. The experimenter then showed children
a card with a picture of the other child and said that they were either a toddler (Younger Other)
or a first-grader (Older Other). The experimenter then asked children their own age, so that
they could specify that the other child was younger or older, by condition. The other child was
matched by gender to the participant. For each category (Younger boy, Older boy, Younger girl,
Older girl) one of two pictures was used to reduce the possibility that ancillary features of any
picture might influence children’s perceptions of the other child’s abilities. The photographs
represented a diversity of races and ethnicities.
The experimenter then asked children to allocate roles by choosing which game the
other child should play, placing the other child’s picture next to the game chosen for them and
the card with “You” next to the game the participant chose for themselves. While one game
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
76
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
was designed to be easier than the other, differences in motor skills or experience might lead
different children to different conclusions. To ensure that the role allocation matched children’s
judgment of the relative difficulty of the two games, we asked children, “Which game was
easier?” Children were then asked why they chose the game they picked for the other child.
Finalmente, as a comprehension and memory check, we asked children if the other child was older
or younger. This last question was used as an inclusion criterion: children who did not answer
correctly were not included in the analysis. Following these questions, the experimenter left
the room briefly (15–30 s) and returned saying that she couldn’t find the other child, and then
played the games with the participant.
Preregistered Analyses and Results
All data were coded from videotape by the second author. A naïve coder blind to condition
and hypotheses recoded a randomly selected sample of 25% of the data for the three out-
come measures: the question about role allocation, the question about game difficulty, E
the question about Jamie’s age. Coders agreed 100% of the time (Cohen’s kappa = 1).
In response to, “Which game was easier?" 37 del 44 children (84%) responded that
the game designed to be easier was easier for them. Children’s self-reported judgment was
used in all analyses (consistent with the preregistered design). We expected that there might
be some differences in children’s perception of the relative difficulty of the two games due
to differences in children’s motor skill development and their prior experience with throwing
balls or tossing rings. We did, Tuttavia, expect that children would use their own assessment
of the difficulty of the tasks as proxies for how easy or hard they would be for other children
(Gweon, Asaba, & Bennett-Pierre, 2017).
As predicted, children’s role assignments differed by condition [χ2(1) = 7.615, p = .006,
V = .462]. In the Younger Other condition, 14 children (63%) children assigned their partner
the Easy Game. By contrast, in the Older Other condition, only 4 children (18%) assigned their
partner the Easy Game (Figura 2). Collapsing across conditions, 72.72% of children assigned
roles in a way corresponding to the difficulty of fulfilling each role in the joint task, p = .004
by binomial test (two-sided). Così, children allocated roles in a way most likely to lead to
their joint success and there was no significant difference in children’s ability to allocate roles
effectively in each condition [χ2(1) = 1.031, p = .310, V = .204].
Given evidence that even 3-and-a-half-year-olds flexibly switch roles in collaborative
compiti (Ashley & Tomasello, 1998), we did not predict an effect of age on children’s role allo-
catione. Nonetheless, because previous work has found that 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds,
allocate roles based on available resources (Warneken et al., 2014), we looked at whether the
likelihood of participants allocating roles based on ability increased with age. As predicted,
there was no effect of age in a logistic regression model using chronological age to predict role
assignment, β = −.004, p = .995. This suggests that children ages 3 and a half to 5 and a half
years can allocate roles in a cooperative interaction given inferred differences in ability.
Discussion
These results suggest that children consider their own and their partner’s relative abilities when
allocating roles in a cooperative interaction. Tuttavia, they leave open the question about the
extent to which preschoolers simply assign harder games to older children and easier games
to younger children without regard for the context, and more generally, whether children will
allocate roles differently in different contexts. In Experiment 2, we look at how children allocate
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
77
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Figura 2. Proportion of children who chose the Easy Game or Hard Game for their partner by
condition in Experiment 1—Cooperative Context.
roles when their goal is to compete with another child. Although in principle, children might
resist taking an unfair advantage (Grocke et al., 2015), as noted above, the vast majority of work
suggests that preschoolers will act in self-interested ways in first-person interactions (Blake &
McAuliffe, 2011; Fehr et al., 2008; Shaw & Olson, 2012; Smith et al., 2013). Thus in Experi-
ment 2, we predict that preschoolers should ignore relative ability and assign roles based
on the relative difficulty of the tasks: assigning the easier game to themselves and the harder
one to their opponents.
EXPERIMENT 2
Method
As in Experiment 1, all participants were recruited from an urban children’s museum and ran-
domly assigned to one of two conditions: Younger Other or Older Other. Forty-four children
(mean age = 54 months; range 42–65 months) were included in the final sample (n = 22 per
condition). Seven additional children did not pass the inclusion criteria (see Experiment 1 for
details). Two additional children were tested but excluded due to parental interference. IL
materials were the same as in Experiment 1.
Children were introduced to and practiced the two games as in Experiment 1. Dopo
children practiced each game, the experimenter introduced the light machine and explained
that the person who got a ball in the box or a ring on the pole first would win and get to turn
on the machine. All other procedures were identical to those in Experiment 1.
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
78
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
Preregistered Analyses and Results
Data were coded as in Experiment 1. Intercoder agreement was 100% (Cohen’s kappa = 1).
In response to, “Which game was easier?" 33 del 44 children (75%) responded that the
game we had designed to be easier was easier for them.
As in Experiment 1, children’s own judgments were used for all analyses. In the Younger
Other condition, 13 children (59%) assigned their partner the Hard Game (Figura 3). Nel
Older Other condition, 18 children (82%) assigned their partner the Hard Game. As predicted,
in Experiment 2 children’s role assignments did not differ by condition χ2(1) = 1.747, p = .186,
V = .249. Collapsing across conditions, 70.45% of children assigned the harder game to the
Other child, p = .010 by binomial test (two-sided).
Discussion
These results suggest that preschoolers’ flexible allocation of roles in Experiment 1 was not
due merely to a tendency to assign younger children easier games and older children harder
games. In the competitive context of Experiment 2, preschoolers assigned harder games to
their opponent regardless of inferred ability. È interessante notare, although in the Older Other con-
dizione, children chose the harder game for their partner significantly above chance, children
chose at chance in the Younger Other game. This is consistent with the possibility that at least
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Figura 3. Proportion of children who chose the Easy Game or Hard Game for their partner by
condition in Experiment 2—Competitive Context.
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
79
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
some of the children may have been resistant to an unfair procedure (Grocke et al., 2015) E
preferred to level the playing field by assigning the 2-year-old the easier game. Future re-
search might look in more detail at the development of children’s sensitivity to procedural
justice in competitive contexts. Overall however, children distinguished between cooperative
and competitive goals, assigning roles according to relative ability in the collaborative context
and according to self-advantage in the competitive context. In Experiment 3, we further inves-
tigate children’s role allocation by looking at whether they assign all children the easier task
in prosocial contexts.
EXPERIMENT 3
Method
Children were recruited and assigned to conditions as in Experiments 1 E 2. Forty-four
children (mean age = 55 months; range 43–66 months) were included in the final sample
(n = 22 per condition). Ten additional children did not pass the inclusion criteria. (Vedere
Experiment 1 for details.) Five additional children were tested but excluded due to parental
interference. Materials were the same as in previous experiments.
The procedure was identical to Experiments 1 E 2 except that the experimenter ex-
plained that the children would get a sticker for the number of rings and balls they scored at
the end of the game. After children practiced the games and were given the stickers, they were
introduced to Jamie, who would come and play after the participant. Children were told that
Jamie would only have time to play one of the two games. Children were asked which game
Jamie should play.
Preregistered Analyses and Results
Data were coded as in Experiment 1. Intercoder agreement was 97.22% (Cohen’s kappa =
1). In response to, “Which game was easier?" 32 del 44 children (73%) responded that the
game we had designed to be easier was easier for them.
As previously, children’s own judgments were used for all analyses. In the Younger Other
condition, 17 children (77%) assigned their partner the Easy Game. In the Older Other con-
dizione, 13 children (59%) assigned their partner the Easy Game (Guarda la figura 4). As predicted,
children’s role assignments did not differ by condition [χ2(1) = .943, p = .332, V = .195].
Collapsing across conditions, 30 del 44 children (68%) assigned the Easy game to the Other
child (p = .023 by binomial test). See the Supplemental Materials (Magid et al., 2018) for ex-
ploratory analyses evaluating whether the age difference between participants and the Other
child affect role allocation.
Discussion
The results from Experiment 3 provide further evidence that children’s role assignment is
sensitive to the goal context. Consistent with previous work (per esempio., Buttelmann, Carpenter, &
Tomasello, 2009; Knudsen & Liszkowski, 2012; Martin & Olson, 2013), this suggests that young
children can go beyond others’ explicit requests in providing assistance to others. Preschoolers
are sensitive to the difficulty of components of a task, and their helping behavior is sensitive to
these dimensions of difficulty (per esempio., Bridgers, Jara-Ettinger, & Gweon, 2016, for similar results
in selective teaching).
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
80
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
l
D
o
w
N
o
UN
D
e
D
F
R
o
M
H
T
T
P
:
/
/
D
io
R
e
C
T
.
M
io
T
.
/
e
D
tu
o
P
M
io
/
l
UN
R
T
io
C
e
–
P
D
F
/
Figura 4. Proportion of children who chose the Easy Game or Hard Game for their partner by
condition in Experiment 3—Prosocial Context.
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
P
M
_
UN
_
0
0
0
1
9
P
D
.
io
F
B
sì
G
tu
e
S
T
T
o
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3
GENERAL DISCUSSION
In the current study, children effectively allocated roles in cooperative, competitivo, and pro-
social interactions. Although preschoolers might simply choose which game to play based on
level of enjoyment or choose a single strategy for role allocation independent of contexts (per esempio.,
always assigning hard games to older children and easier games to others), instead we found
patterns of role allocation that aligned with the way most likely to achieve the desired outcome.
Preschoolers considered differences in relative ability to effectively allocate roles to achieve a
collaborative goal; they were also able to ignore differences in relative ability to allocate roles
in competitive and prosocial contexts.
These findings support a large literature showing that children are adept at cooperating
with others, in that they can take on complementary as well as parallel roles (Warneken et al.,
2006), and they can divide labor and flexibly change roles within a task (Fletcher et al., 2012).
The current study extends these findings to demonstrate that children are able to cooperate in
a way that is based on something intrinsic about their collaborative partner. Inoltre, we
found that children are able to use themselves as a reference point when collaborating. Piuttosto
than always taking on the easier or harder task in Experiment 1, children’s role allocation dif-
fered based on the age of the partner relative to the participant. Critically, when the goal was
competitivo, children were also able to take a purely self-interested perspective, and when the
goal was prosocial, children were able to take themselves out of the picture and consider only
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
81
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
the interests of the other. Così, although differences in children’s own ability relative to others
were present in all three contexts, children were able to both consider and disregard these
differences as appropriate. In an exploratory analysis across experiments, we find that con-
text and condition together affected children’s role allocation (see the Supplemental Materials
[Magid et al., 2018]).
Our study considered three goal contexts, but there are a few other goal contexts that
would be interesting to investigate. In our version of a competitive context, the goal was to
score first. Tuttavia, in competitive sports, the goal is usually to see who prevails in a fair
match, and sometimes handicaps are introduced on more able players (per esempio., as in horse racing)
to make the game more compelling. In a competitive context where the goal is not winning
at all costs but winning at a fair match, previous work on children’s preference for procedural
justice (per esempio., Grocke et al., 2015) would support the idea that children would allocate roles in a
way that would mirror the role allocation in Experiment 1: assigning the easier task to a younger
player and the harder task to an older one. Infatti, across experiments, children were more
likely to assign the Younger Other the easier game and the Older Other the harder game (P <
.001), suggesting they integrate the notion of procedural justice or appropriateness with goal
context when assigning roles (see the Supplemental Materials [Magid et al., 2018]). Future
work would be necessary to understand the precise way in which children combine notions
of fairness with other goals.
Similarly, a general desire to be prosocial could manifest itself in a number of different
ways. In Experiment 3 (when the other child could accrue stickers for succeeding) the prosocial
decision was to help the other individual succeed on the task; in this context, the children, as
predicted, assigned the other child the easier game. However, one could also be prosocial
by helping an individual develop her skills. In line with this, there is extensive evidence for
children’s motivation and ability to teach others (Bass et al., 2017; Bridgers et al., 2016; Clegg &
Legare, 2016; Gweon & Schulz, 2018; Liszkowski et al., 2008; Ronfard, Was, & Harris, 2016;
Strauss, Calero, & Sigman, 2014; Ziv & Frye, 2004). In contexts where teaching is the intended
goal, there might be good reasons for assigning the hard task, even to the younger children. In
an analysis of children’s verbal explanations for their role assignments, we found that children
invoked explanations of the other child over 40% of the time in prosocial contexts, suggesting
they are considering features and goals of the other child (Supplemental Materials [Magid et al.,
2018], Table S3). Future research might look at children’s sensitivity to these more nuanced goal
contexts. Future work might also look at how children’s ability to allocate roles extends beyond
dyadic interactions to third-party contexts and larger social groups.
The current study also suggests that children can use relatively fine-grained differences
in age (2 years) to infer relative ability. However, age is a coarse proxy for ability: younger
individuals are sometimes more skilled, or skilled in different respects, than older ones. Re-
search suggests that preschoolers are sensitive to these factors (Jaswal & Neely, 2006; Koenig
& Jaswal, 2011; Kushnir et al., 2013; Lutz & Keil, 2002; VanderBorght & Jaswal, 2009). Future
work might investigate whether children can use more nuanced indices of ability differences
to allocate roles.
Additionally, the current study focused on individuals’ relative competence to complete
a task. However, other factors both internal to the individual (e.g., motivation, trustwor-
(access to tools, relative
thiness, energy level,
proximity, etc.) affect someone’s ability to complete a goal, influencing the costs of goal-
directed actions and the probability of success. Previous research suggests that children eval-
uate the costs and rewards of others’ goal-directed actions (Jara-Ettinger, Gweon, Tenenbaum,
informational access, etc.) and external
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
82
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
o
p
m
i
/
l
a
r
t
i
c
e
-
p
d
f
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
p
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
1
9
p
d
.
i
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
& Schulz, 2015; Jara-Ettinger, Tenenbaum, et al., 2015; Liu, Ullman, Tenenbaum, & Spelke,
2017); future research might look quantitatively at whether children’s role assignment varies
with calculations of expected utility (Jara-Ettinger et al., 2016). For the present, this study
suggests that well before children have much, if any, experience delegating responsibility
they appropriately invoke and ignore ability differences in assigning roles to achieve diverse
goals.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the Boston Children’s Museum, and participating families, as well as members of the
Early Childhood Cognition Lab, including Julia Leonard, for helpful comments and discussion,
and Andrea Garcia for help coding.
FUNDING INFORMATION
LES, National Science Foundation (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001), Award ID: CCF-
1231216. RWM, National Science Foundation (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001), Award
ID: GRFP.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
RWM: Conceptualization: Lead; Data curation: Supporting; Formal analysis: Lead; Funding
acquisition: Equal; Investigation: Equal; Methodology: Equal; Project administration: Equal;
Writing—original draft: Equal; Writing—review & editing: Equal. MD: Conceptualization:
Equal; Data curation: Lead; Investigation: Equal; Methodology: Equal; Project administration:
Equal; Writing—review & editing: Supporting. LES: Conceptualization: Equal; Funding acqui-
sition: Lead; Investigation: Equal; Methodology: Equal; Supervision: Lead; Writing—original
draft: Equal.
REFERENCES
Ashley, J., & Tomasello, M. (1998). Cooperative problem-solving
and teaching in preschoolers. Social Development, 7, 143–163.
Bass, L., Bonawitz, E., Shafto, P., Ramargan, D., Gopnik, A., &
Wellman, H. M.
I know what you need to know:
Children’s developing theory of mind and pedagogical evi-
dence selection. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E.
Davelaar, (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Confer-
ence of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 99–104). Austin, TX:
Cognitive Science Society.
(2017).
Baumard, N., Mascaro, O., & Chevallier, C.
(2012). Preschoolers
are able to take merit into account when distributing goods.
Developmental Psychology, 48, 492–498.
Behne, T., Carpenter, M., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2005). Unwill-
ing versus unable: Infants’ understanding of intentional action.
Developmental Psychology, 41, 328–337.
Blake, P. R., & McAuliffe, K. (2011). “I had so much it didn’t seem
fair”: Eight-year-olds reject two forms of inequity. Cognition, 120,
215–224.
Boesch, C., & Boesch, H. (1989). Hunting behavior of wild chim-
panzees in the Tai National Park. American Journal of Physical
Anthropology, 78, 547–573.
Bridgers, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gweon, H.
(2016). Children con-
sider others’ expected costs and rewards when deciding what to
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
teach. In A. Papafragou, D. Grodner, D. Mirman, & J. C. Trueswell
(Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cogni-
tive Science Society (pp. 559–564). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science
Society.
Brownell, C. A., & Carriger, M. S. (1990). Changes in coopera-
tion and self-other differentiation during the second year. Child
Development, 61, 1164–1174.
Brownell, C. A., Ramani, G. B., & Zerwas, S. (2006). Becoming a
social partner with peers: Cooperation and social understanding
in one-and two-year-olds. Child Development, 77, 803–821.
Brownell, C. A., Svetlova, M., & Nichols, S. (2009). To share or not
to share: When do toddlers respond to another’s needs? Infancy,
14, 117–130.
Buresh, J. S., & Woodward, A. L. (2007). Infants track action goals
within and across agents. Cognition, 104, 287–314.
Butler, R.
Burhans, K. K., & Dweck, C. S. (1995). Helplessness in early childhood:
The role of contingent worth. Child Development, 66, 1719–1738.
(1998). Age trends in the use of social and temporal
comparison for self-evaluation: Examination of a novel develop-
mental hypothesis. Child Development, 69, 1054–1073.
Buttelmann, D., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Eighteen-
month-old infants show false belief understanding in an active
helping paradigm. Cognition, 112, 337–342.
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
83
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
o
p
m
i
/
l
a
r
t
i
c
e
-
p
d
f
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
p
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
1
9
p
d
.
i
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
Carpenter, M., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2002). Understanding
“prior intentions” enables two-year-olds to imitatively learn a
complex task. Child Development, 73, 1431–1441.
Cimpian, A., Mu, Y., & Erickson, L. C. (2012). Who is good at this
game? Linking an activity to a social category undermines chil-
dren’s achievement. Psychological Science, 23, 533–541.
Clegg, J. M., & Legare, C. H. (2016). Instrumental and conventional
interpretations of behavior are associated with distinct outcomes
in early childhood. Child Development, 87, 527–542.
Corriveau, K. H., Ronfard, S., & Cui, Y. K. (2017). Cognitive mech-
anisms associated with children’s selective teaching. Review
of Philosophy and Psychology, 1–18. doi:10.1007/s13164-017-
0343-6
Danovitch, J. H., & Keil, F. C. (2004). Should you ask a fisherman
or a biologist? Developmental shifts in ways of clustering knowl-
edge. Child Development, 75, 918–931.
DiYanni, C., Nini, D., & Rheel, W. (2011). Looking good versus
doing good: Which factors take precedence when children
learn about new tools? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,
110, 575–591.
Fehr, E., Bernhard, H., & Rockenbach, B. (2008). Egalitarianism in
young children. Nature, 454, 1079.
Fletcher, G. E., Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Differences in
cognitive processes underlying the collaborative activities of chil-
dren and chimpanzees. Cognitive Development, 27, 136–153.
Green, V. A., & Rechis, R. (2006). Children’s cooperative and com-
petitive interactions in limited resource situations: A literature
review. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 27, 42–59.
Grocke, P., Rossano, F., & Tomasello, M. (2015). Procedural justice
in children: Preschoolers accept unequal resource distributions
if the procedure provides equal opportunities. Journal of Experi-
mental Child Psychology, 140, 197–210.
Gweon, H., Asaba, M., & Bennett-Pierre, G.
(2017). Reverse-
engineering the process: Adults’ and preschoolers’ ability to in-
fer the difficulty of novel tasks.
In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes,
T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th An-
nual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 458–463).
Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Gweon, H., & Schulz, L.
(2018). From exploration to instruction:
Children learn from exploration and tailor their demonstrations
to observers’ goals and competence. Child Development. doi:
10.1111/cdev.13059
Hamlin, J. K.
(2013). Moral judgment and action in preverbal in-
fants and toddlers: Evidence for an innate moral core. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 186–193.
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by
preverbal infants. Nature, 450, 557–559.
Hay, D. F.
(1979). Cooperative interactions and sharing between
very young children and their parents. Developmental Psychol-
ogy, 15, 647–653.
Heyman, G. D., Dweck, C. S., & Cain, K. M. (1992). Young chil-
dren’s vulnerability to self-blame and helplessness: Relationship
to beliefs about goodness. Child Development, 63, 401–415.
Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2016).
The naïve utility calculus: Computational principles underlying
commonsense psychology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20,
589–604.
Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. E. (2015).
Children’s understanding of the costs and rewards underlying
rational action. Cognition, 140, 14–23.
Jara-Ettinger, J., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. E. (2015). Not so
innocent: Toddlers inferences about costs and culpability. Psy-
chological Science, 26, 633–640.
Jaswal, V. K., & Neely, L. A.
(2006). Adults don’t always know
best: Preschoolers use past reliability over age when learning new
words. Psychological Science, 17, 757–758.
Johnson-Pynn, J. S., & Nisbet, V. S. (2002). Preschoolers effectively
tutor novice classmates in a block construction task. Child Study
Journal, 32, 241–256.
Knudsen, B., & Liszkowski, U. (2012). 18-month-olds predict spe-
cific action mistakes through attribution of false belief, not igno-
rance, and intervene accordingly. Infancy, 17, 672–691.
Koenig, M. A., Clément, F., & Harris, P. L.
(2004). Trust in testi-
mony: Children’s use of true and false statements. Psychological
Science, 15, 694–698.
Koenig, M. A., & Jaswal, V. K. (2011). Characterizing children’s ex-
pectations about expertise and incompetence: Halo or pitchfork
effects? Child Development, 82, 1634–1647.
Kushnir, T., Vredenburgh, C., & Schneider, L. A. (2013). “Who can
help me fix this toy?” The distinction between causal knowledge
and word knowledge guides preschoolers’ selective requests for
information. Developmental Psychology, 49, 446–453.
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., Striano, T., & Tomasello, M. (2006).
12- and 18-month-olds point to provide information for others.
Journal of Cognition and Development, 7, 173–187.
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Twelve-
month-olds communicate helpfully and appropriately for knowl-
edgeable and ignorant partners. Cognition, 108, 732–739.
Liu, S., Ullman, T. D., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Spelke, E. S.
(2017).
Ten-month-old infants infer the value of goals from the costs of
actions. Science, 358, 1038–1041.
Lutz, D. J., & Keil, F. C. (2002). Early understanding of the division
of cognitive labor. Child Development, 73, 1073–1084.
Magid, R. W., DePascale, M., & Schulz, L. (2018). Supplemental ma-
terial for “Four- and 5-year-olds infer differences in relative ability
and appropriately allocate roles to achieve cooperative, compet-
itive, and prosocial goals.” Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive
Science, 2(2), 72–85. doi:10.1162/opmi_a_00019
Magid, R. W., & Schulz, L.
(2015). Quit while you’re ahead:
Preschoolers persistence and willingness to accept challenges
are affected by social comparison. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale,
A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, &
P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1482–1487).
Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Magid, R. W., Schulz, L., & DePascale, M. (2018, June 13). Chil-
dren’s use of self/other representations in joint goals. Retrieved
from osf.io/aq246
Martin, A., & Olson, K. R. (2013). When kids know better: Paternal-
istic helping in 3-year-old children. Developmental Psychology,
49, 2071–2081.
Meltzoff, A. N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others:
intended acts by 18-month-old children.
Re-enactment of
Developmental Psychology, 31, 838–850.
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
84
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
o
p
m
i
/
l
a
r
t
i
c
e
-
p
d
f
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
p
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
1
9
p
d
.
i
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Role Allocation Magid, DePascale, Schulz
Olson, K. R., & Spelke, E. S. (2008). Foundations of cooperation in
Strauss, S., Calero, C. I., & Sigman, M. (2014). Teaching, naturally.
young children. Cognition, 108, 222–231.
Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 3, 38–43.
Rhodes, M., & Brickman, D.
responses
to social comparisons involving relative failure. Psychological
Science, 19, 968–972.
(2008). Preschoolers’
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeships in thinking: Cognitive devel-
opment in social context. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press.
Ronfard, S., Was, A. M., & Harris, P. L. (2016). Children teach
methods they could not discover for themselves. Journal of Ex-
perimental Child Psychology, 142, 107–117.
Ross, H. S., & Lollis, S. P.
(1987). Communication within infant
social games. Developmental Psychology, 23, 241–248.
Schmidt, M. F., Rakoczy, H., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Young chil-
dren enforce social norms selectively depending on the violator’s
group affiliation. Cognition, 124, 325–333.
Schmidt, M. F., & Sommerville, J. A. (2011). Fairness expectations
and altruistic sharing in 15-month-old human infants. PLOS ONE,
6, e23223.
Schmidt, M. F., Svetlova, M., Johe, J., & Tomasello, M. (2016).
Children’s developing understanding of legitimate reasons for
allocating resources unequally. Cognitive Development, 37,
42–52.
Schneider, W.
(1998). Performance prediction in young children:
Effects of skill, metacognition and wishful thinking. Develop-
mental Science, 1, 291–297.
Shaw, A., DeScioli, P., & Olson, K. R. (2012). Fairness versus favor-
itism in children. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33, 736–745.
Shaw, A., & Olson, K. R. (2012). Children discard a resource to
avoid inequity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
141, 382.
Smith, C. E., Blake, P. R., & Harris, P. L.
I should but I
won’t: Why young children endorse norms of fair sharing but do
not follow them. PLOS ONE, 8, e59510.
(2013).
Taylor, M., Cartwright, B. S., & Bowden, T. (1991). Perspective tak-
ing and theory of mind: Do children predict interpretive diver-
sity as a function of differences in observers’ knowledge? Child
Development, 62, 1334–1351.
Tomasello, M. (1999). The human adaptation for culture. Annual
Review of Anthropology, 28, 509–529.
Van de Vondervoort, J. W., & Hamlin, J. K. (2016). Evidence for in-
tuitive morality: Preverbal infants make sociomoral evaluations.
Child Development Perspectives, 10, 143–148.
VanderBorght, M., & Jaswal, V. K.
(2009). Who knows best? Pre-
schoolers sometimes prefer child informants over adult infor-
mants. Infant and Child Development, 18, 61–71.
Warneken, F. (2015). Precocious pro-sociality: Why do young chil-
dren help? Child Development Perspectives, 9, 1–6.
Warneken, F. (2017). How children solve the two challenges of
cooperation. Annual Review of Psychology, 69. doi:10.1146/
annurev-psych-122216-011813
Warneken, F., Chen, F., & Tomasello, M.
(2006). Cooperative ac-
tivities in young children and chimpanzees. Child Development,
77, 640–663.
Warneken, F., Steinwender, J., Hamann, K., & Tomasello, M. (2014).
Young children’s planning in a collaborative problem-solving
task. Cognitive Development, 31, 48–58.
Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human
infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 311, 1301–1303.
Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Helping and cooperation at
14 months of age. Infancy, 11, 271–294.
Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). The roots of human altruism.
British Journal of Psychology, 100, 455–471.
Ziv, M., & Frye, D.
(2004). Children’s understanding of teaching:
The role of knowledge and belief. Cognitive Development, 19,
457–477.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
o
p
m
i
/
l
a
r
t
i
c
e
-
p
d
f
/
/
/
/
/
2
2
7
2
1
8
6
8
3
2
3
o
p
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
1
9
p
d
.
i
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science
85
