Assessing the effect mentors have on their mentees is methodologically challenging: most programs merely provide relatively short mentoring durations (typically in the range of 1 year), age ranges are usually rather small, and examining dyads with anything other than questionnaires has proven to be challenging in the past. Thus, although some excellent causal studies do exist, in general causal research is limited in the field and studies are opened up to social desirability. Using a controlled laboratory setting, the current study investigates the causal effect of a mentor's presence on the mentee's empathic accuracy, cognitive functioning, and prosocial behavior. The sample is characterized by a wide age range for mentees and long mentoring durations. Results support the hypothesis that mentees' performance is improved in all three domains when their mentor is present as compared to when their mentor is absent. Furthermore, mentoring duration was positively associated with the mentee's cognitive functioning when controlling for the mentee's age. The current findings extend our knowledge of the benefits of youth mentoring programs and demonstrate the necessity to include laboratory research when investigating mentoring dyads.

中文翻译：

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受辅导儿童的同理心、认知功能和亲社会行为

评估导师对其受指导者的影响在方法上具有挑战性：大多数项目仅提供相对较短的指导持续时间（通常在 1 年的范围内），年龄范围通常相当小，并且使用问卷以外的任何其他方法来检查二元组已被证明具有挑战性在过去。因此，尽管确实存在一些优秀的因果研究，但一般而言，因果研究在该领域是有限的，并且研​​究对社会期望开放。目前的研究使用受控的实验室环境，调查了导师的存在对被指导者的移情准确性、认知功能和亲社会行为的因果影响。该样本的特点是受指导者年龄范围广，指导时间长。结果支持以下假设，即受指导者的 当他们的导师在场时，与他们的导师不在场时相比，他们在所有三个领域的表现都有所提高。此外，在控制被指导者的年龄时，指导持续时间与被指导者的认知功能呈正相关。目前的研究结果扩展了我们对青年指导计划的好处的认识，并证明了在调查指导二人组时纳入实验室研究的必要性。