ABSTRACT

This paper reports young (3–5 year-olds’) children’s cognitive and affective understanding of actual moral (harm to others) and prudential (harm to self) transgressions in the family, as reported by the parent, but in a way that provides the child the opportunity to reflect on and reason about the actual events. A total of 38 parent–child dyads participated. Findings illuminate different levels of moral understanding during preschool years. Specifically, there was a sharp break between the understanding of 3 and 4–5 year-olds for both transgressions. However, across all age groups, the rate of increased relevance of the reasoning to the act was greater for prudential than for moral transgressions, and the understanding of own feelings as an agent of the transgression developed more slowly in the moral than the prudential domains. Unexpectedly, many 3 year-olds failed to understand the dangers inherent in prudential transgressions.

摘要

本文报告了父母报告的年轻（3-5 岁）儿童对家庭中实际道德（对他人的伤害）和谨慎（对自己的伤害）违规行为的认知和情感理解，但其方式提供了孩子有机会对实际事件进行反思和推理。共有38名亲子对子参与。研究结果阐明了学龄前儿童的不同道德理解水平。具体来说，3 岁和 4-5 岁儿童对这两种违规行为的理解之间存在急剧的差异。然而，在所有年龄组中，审慎行为的推理与行为相关性的增加率高于道德违法行为，以及将自己的感受理解为违法行为的代理人在道德领域比在审慎领域发展得更慢。出乎意料的是，许多 3 岁的孩子无法理解审慎违规行为所固有的危险。