Explicit Scaffolding Increases Simple Helping in Younger Infants

Infants become increasingly helpful during the second year. We investigated experimentally whether adults' explicit scaffolding influences this development. Infants (N = 69, 13-18 months old) participated in a series of simple helping tasks. Half of infants received explicit scaffolding (encour...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Developmental psychology 2017-03, Vol.53 (3), p.407-416
Main Authors: Dahl, Audun, Satlof-Bedrick, Emma S., Hammond, Stuart I., Drummond, Jesse K., Waugh, Whitney E., Brownell, Celia A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Age Differences
Assistance (Social Behavior)
Babies
Child Development
Cooperative Behavior
Developmental psychology
Eye Movements
Female
Gender Differences
Helping Relationship
Human
Humans
Infant
Infant Behavior - psychology
Infant Development
Infants
Male
Motivation
Older children
Praise
Prosocial Behavior
Psychological Tests
Psychology, Child
Random Allocation
Regression Analysis
Reward
Scaffolding
Scaffolding (Teaching Technique)
Sex Factors
Social experiences
Social Interaction
Vocabulary
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Summary:Infants become increasingly helpful during the second year. We investigated experimentally whether adults' explicit scaffolding influences this development. Infants (N = 69, 13-18 months old) participated in a series of simple helping tasks. Half of infants received explicit scaffolding (encouragement and praise), whereas the other half did not. Among younger infants (below 15 months), infants who received explicit scaffolding helped twice as often as infants in the control group, and also helped more on several subsequent trials when no scaffolding was provided. As predicted, older infants were not affected by explicit scaffolding. These results demonstrate the influence of social experiences in early helping, but also how the effects of scaffolding may depend on the developmental level of the child. Less explicit forms of scaffolding may be effective when children are older.
ISSN:0012-1649
1939-0599
DOI:10.1037/dev0000244