Do you keep promises to your children? | Integrated Learning Therapy

It seems that even very young children are aware when we break our promises or make weak excuses for failing to deliver on a promise. Children as young as 3 years recognise that some excuses are better than others and by the time they reach preschool age, they understand that some reasons for having to break promises are more reasonable than others.

Leon Li, who did the research with developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello as part of his Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience at Duke.

Leon Li and Michael Tomasello published the results of a study in the journal Cognitive Development. They showed a group of 3 – 5 year olds a series of videos featuring puppets who promised to show them a toy but then after leaving the scene, returned empty-handed.

Afterwards, the puppets either gave a good excuse for going back on their word (“I had to help my friend with his homework”), a bad excuse (“I wanted to watch TV”), or no explanation at all. The children were then asked whether they thought the puppets’ actions were wrong or not, and why.

No matter what the excuse (or lack thereof), the children agreed that it was generally wrong to break a promise. But they were more understanding when the puppets offered a good excuse (i.e., they had to help someone), versus a lame one (i.e., they just wanted to do something fun instead).

As Li wrote, children this age grasp that obligations to help others take priority over selfish desires.

The children’s responses also revealed that a lame excuse was just as bad as none at all.

“Previous research has suggested that in some cases, young kids will just take any reason to be better than no reason at all,” Li said. “But here we showed that kids do pay attention to the actual content.”

Children’s explanations of their answers differed with age. Compared with three-year-olds, five-year-olds were better at expressing their thoughts of what the puppets “should” do, or are “supposed” to do, suggesting that understanding of obligations to others is more fully developed by this age.

Surprisingly, poor excuses didn’t make the children less inclined to say they “liked” some puppets, or would invite those puppets to a play date.

“Usually if someone breaks a promise and gives you a lame reason, it implies they’re not really a good friend,” Li said. “Children this age don’t make that connection. They’re just not there yet.”

Li said the findings are also relevant to any adult who has uttered the classic fallback phrase, “Because I said so.”

“Kids are paying attention and can tell that is a lame reason,” Li said.

More information: Leon Li et al, Young children judge defection less negatively when there’s a good justification, Cognitive Development(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101268

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.