Development of preschoolers' deontic reasoning

摘要

A total of 96 preschoolers' deontic reasoning was explored through 4 sets of pictures representing the protagonist's, Mom's and bilateral violation of a presetted agreement. Results showed significant developmental trends and perspective effects in preschoolers' deontic reasoning, that is, with age more children could detect mom's violation, while their detection of child protagonist's violation remains relatively lower and even showed a decrease during 4-5 year-old. In contrast, preschoolers tended to pay much more attention to the protagonist's violation and ignore mom's in bilateral violation situation. These results indicated the developing expansion of preschoolers' autonomy and their monitoring of the behavior of authorities, and implicated a possible parenting method in practice.