The current study examined relations between distinct aspects of moral functioning, and their cognitive and emotional correlates, in preschool age children. Participants were 171 typically developing 3- to 6-year-olds. Each child completed several tasks, including (a) moral tasks assessing both performance of various moral actions and evaluations…

This study investigated differences in children's and adolescents' experiences of harming their siblings and friends. Participants ("N" = 101; 7-, 11-, and 16-year-olds) provided accounts of events when they hurt a younger sibling and a friend. Harm against friends was described as unusual, unforeseeable, and circumstantial. By contrast,…

Examines several issues arising from two differing approaches to morality--Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning development and Gilligan's theory of moral orientations. (PCB)

A theory of the assignment of moral responsibility and punishment for harm was tested with 5- to 11-year-old children. Results indicated sophisticated use of moral concepts from 5 years. Developmental trends suggested increasing sensitivity to these concepts, greater tolerance for harm doing, and more emphasis on restitution than punishment.…

Two studies used a modification of the weakly interpretive scoring method of Langford and D'Cruz to examine judicial and legislative reasoning. Findings were in accord with modified versions of Piaget's and Kohlberg's views and contradicted Gibbs' theory. There were three stages of legislative reasoning between 7 and 21 years: heteronomy or…

Unlike Piaget's clinical procedure, the experiment's methodology allowed substantiation of the ability of children to simultaneously weigh damage and intent information when making a moral judgment. Other advantages of this quantitative methodology are also presented. (Authors)

Social information processing theory has been posited as a description of how mental operations affect behavioral responding in social situations. Arsenio and Lemerise (this issue) proposed that consideration of concepts and methods from moral domain models could enhance this description. This paper agrees with their proposition, although it…

Studied the emotional attributions which 60 children aged four-eight gave to a story figure who violated a moral rule. Results suggested a clear change from outcome-oriented toward morally oriented attributions to a moral wrongdoer between the different age groups. (RJC)

These results suggest that previously published findings indicating that young children are unresponsive to issues of intentionality are methodological artifacts of the verbal assessment procedures employed. (Authors)

Examined 6-, 8-, and 10-year olds' conceptions of flags as social conventions and their understandings of the symbolic and psychological consequences associated with transgressions toward flags. Found that despite age-related increases in understanding of flags as meaningful collective symbols, children at all ages considered transgressions to be…

Videotaped stories depicting deliberate lies and unintentionally untrue statements were presented to 200 subjects evenly divided into the following age groups: 5, 8, 9, 11 years, and adult. Definitions of lying were seen to change gradually over this age range. (Author/RH)

The moral realism of everyday life is neither Piaget's childlike egocentrism nor Gabennesch's reification. Natural moral law is seen by Turiel, a cognitivist, as a code of harm, rights, and justice. Other cognitivists accept codes of duty and natural order. (BC)

Moral judgments are an important aspect of social reasoning, not arbitrary products of social formations. Maintains that Gabennesch relegates moral concepts to reification, failing to account for the distinctions between conventionality and moral concepts. (BC)

Some studies indicate that individuals recognize conventional norms as social contrivances; others, that individuals reify social formations as something other than social products. Questions about comparatively transparent rules and the use of simplistic questions for complex phenomena give an exaggerated portrayal of individuals' awareness of…