When and how other people’s needs influence children’s helping is poorly understood. Here we focused on whether children use information about other people’s competence in their helping. In Study 1 (N = 128 4- to 8-year-old children), children could provide help to both an incompetent target and a competent target by pushing levers. Whereas older children helped incompetent targets more than competent targets, younger children (<5 years) helped both targets equally. Two further experiments (N = 20 and N = 28) revealed that 4-year-olds understood that the incompetent person needed more help and also understood how they could help. Thus, young children do not, like older children, give more help to those who need it the most. We discuss potential developmental changes toward competence-based helping.

人们对其他人的需求何时以及如何影响儿童的帮助知之甚少。在这里，我们关注儿童是否在帮助他人时使用有关他人能力的信息。在研究 1 中（N  = 128 名 4 至 8 岁儿童），儿童可以通过推动杠杆来为不称职的目标和称职的目标提供帮助。年龄较大的儿童对不称职的目标的帮助大于称职的目标，而年幼的儿童（<5 岁）对这两个目标的帮助相同。两个进一步的实验（N  = 20 和N = 28) 表明 4 岁的孩子明白无能的人需要更多帮助，也明白他们可以如何提供帮助。因此，年幼的孩子不会像年长的孩子一样，给予最需要帮助的人更多的帮助。我们讨论了基于能力的帮助的潜在发展变化。