Development of Sharing in Preschoolers in Relation to Theory of Mind Understanding

Development of Sharing in Preschoolers in Relation to Theory of Mind Understanding Zhen Wu 1, 2 (zhen-wu@uiowa.edu) Department of Psychology, Peking University Beijing, 100871, China Department of Psychology, E11 Seashore Hall Iowa City, IA, 52246 USA Yanjie Su (yjsu@pku.edu.cn) Department of Psychology, Peking University Beijing, 100871 China Abstract This study aimed to explore the relationship between children’s sharing behavior and Theory of Mind (ToM) understanding. Seventy-four 2 to 4 years old Chinese children participated in 3 tasks using toys that could be shared with a puppet that was animated by a female experimenter. On each task, the puppet expressed her desire for the items using a series of cues that progressively became more communicative. Children’s ToM understanding was assessed with the scale of ToM tasks (Wellman, Fang, Liu, Zhu, & Liu, 2006). There were two main findings: (1) younger children relied on more explicit communicative cues to share resources with the puppet, while older children shared more spontaneously and (2) children’s sharing behavior was positively correlated to their ToM scores, independent of age. Findings suggest that preschoolers’ sharing behavior is enhanced by their ToM understanding and explicit communicative cues provided by a social partner. Keywords: preschoolers; sharing behavior; Theory of Mind understanding. Introduction Sharing is an important aspect of human cooperative activities with roots very early in life. Studies have shown that infants as young as 8 months old show spontaneous offering of food and other objects to parents (e.g., Hay & Murray, 1982; Hay, 1979; Rheingold, Hay, & West, 1976). Though sharing emerges early, it appears to be a unique challenge for young children. Sharing resources is a much less frequent activity compared to other cooperative activities in young children, such as empathy-related responding, helping and instrument collaboration (Eisenberg, 2005; Grusec, 1991; Warneken & Tomasello, 2007, 2009). Toddlers share toys with others rarely, though the rate of sharing increases from 12 to 30 months of age (e.g., Brownell, Svetlova, & Nichols, 2009; Hay, Castle, Davies, Demetriou, & Stimson, 1999; Levitt, Weber, Clark, & McDonnell, 1985). Other work has shown that preschoolers also share little. For example, three- to five- year-old children reserved 10 pieces of food for themselves while sharing only one piece of food with their peers (Birch & Billman, 1986). Sharing is difficult for children probably because it results in a sacrifice of something valued for the welfare of someone else. There is evidence suggesting that children share more if there is no sacrifice compared to identical circumstances with sacrifices (Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell, 2010; Thompson, Barresi, & Moore, 1997). Though numerous studies have been conducted on sharing behavior, it remains difficult to depict the development of sharing, partially because many studies do not control the circumstances under which sharing was observed. For example, we do not know whether early social acts of offering items to others are primarily other- oriented unless we control for the social partner’s behavior. In these cases, infants may just be seeking attention or reaction from the social partner, or may be complying with the request of others. Previous studies have shown that 2- year-old children shared food with an adult only when the adult actively communicated directly about what she wanted (Brownell et al., 2009), or reached toward the child with palm up while alternating gaze between the child and the food (Dunfield, Kuhlmeier, O’Connell, & Kelley, 2011). Therefore, it is unclear to what extend children’s “sharing” acts are truly sharing behavior with the intention to benefit others if the recipient’s behavior is not controlled. By systematically manipulating the social partner’s behavior, we might get a comprehensive understanding of the development of other-oriented resource sharing (see also Brownell, Iesue, Nichols, & Svetlova, 2012). Therefore, the first goal of the present study was to examine how the social partner’s communication supports young children’s sharing. To do this, we systematically manipulated the expressive cues provided by the partner in the sharing task such that the partner made her needs progressively more explicit with a ﬁxed sequence of cues. We then aimed to see at what point children would share. Another unaddressed question is how we explain the development of sharing in children. Current theories have proposed various underlying mechanisms of sharing, such as the basic imitative tendencies toward people (Grusec, 2006; Hay & Cook, 2007; Rheingold, 1982), the ability to differentiate self’s and other’s internal states (e.g., Moore, 2007), the sympathetic ability to relate self’s emotions and feelings to other’s (e.g., Eisenberg, 2007; Zahn-Waxler & Radke-Yarrow, 1990), the understanding of ownership