Toddlers' affective responses to sociomoral scenes: Insights from physiological measures.

A growing literature suggests that preverbal infants are sensitive to sociomoral scenes and prefer prosocial agents over antisocial agents. It remains unclear, however, whether and how emotional processes are implicated in infants' responses to prosocial/antisocial actions. Although a recent study found that infants and toddlers showed more positive facial expressions after viewing helping (vs. hindering) events, these findings were based on naïve coder ratings of facial activity; furthermore, effect sizes were small. The current studies examined 18- and 24-month-old toddlers' real-time reactivity to helping and hindering interactions using three physiological measures of emotion-related processes. At 18 months, activity in facial musculature involved in smiling/frowning was explored via facial electromyography (EMG). At 24 months, stress (sweat) was explored via electrodermal activity (EDA). At both ages, arousal was explored via pupillometry. Behaviorally, infants showed no preferences for the helper over the hinderer across age groups. EMG analyses revealed that 18-month-olds showed higher corrugator activity (more frowning) during hindering (vs. helping) actions, followed by lower corrugator activity (less frowning) after hindering (vs. helping) actions finished. These findings suggest that antisocial actions elicited negativity, perhaps followed by brief disengagement. EDA analyses revealed no significant event-related differences. Pupillometry analyses revealed that both 18- and 24-month-olds' pupils were smaller after viewing hindering (vs. helping), replicating recent evidence with 5-month-olds and suggesting that toddlers also show less arousal following hindering than following helping. Together, these results provide new evidence with respect to whether and how arousal/affective processes are involved when infants process sociomoral scenarios.

Validation of an open source, remote web-based eye-tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood.

Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in-person eye-tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web-based eye-tracking with in-lab eye-tracking in young children. We report a multi-lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tested sample of 18-27-month-old toddlers (N = 125) revealed that web-based eye-tracking successfully captured goal-based action predictions, although the proportion of the goal-directed anticipatory looking was lower compared to the in-lab sample (N = 70). As expected, attrition rate was substantially higher in the web-based (42%) than the in-lab sample (10%). Excluding trials based on visual inspection of the match of time-locked gaze coordinates and the participant's webcam video overlayed on the stimuli was an important preprocessing step to reduce noise in the data. We discuss the use of this remote web-based method in comparison with other current methodological innovations. Our study demonstrates that remote web-based eye-tracking can be a useful tool for testing toddlers, facilitating recruitment of larger and more diverse samples; a caveat to consider is the larger drop-out rate.

Evidence for core social goal understanding (and, perhaps, core morality) in preverbal infants.

Spelke's What Babies Know masterfully describes infants' impressive repertoire of core cognitive concepts, from which the suite of human knowledge is eventually built. The current commentary argues for the existence of a core concept that Spelke claims preverbal infants lack: social goal. Core social goal concepts, operative extremely early in human development, underlie infants' basic abilities to interpret and evaluate entities within the moral world; such abilities support claims for a core moral domain.

We aren't especially fearful apes, and fearful apes aren't especially prosocial.

Grossmann posits that heightened fearfulness in humans evolved to facilitate cooperative caregiving. We argue that three of his claims - that children express more fear than other apes, that they are uniquely responsive to fearful expressions, and that expression and perception of fear are linked with prosocial behaviors - are inconsistent with existing literature or require additional supporting evidence.

Improving the generalizability of infant psychological research: The ManyBabies model.

Yarkoni's analysis clearly articulates a number of concerns limiting the generalizability and explanatory power of psychological findings, many of which are compounded in infancy research. ManyBabies addresses these concerns via a radically collaborative, large-scale and open approach to research that is grounded in theory-building, committed to diversification, and focused on understanding sources of variation.

The Homogeneity and Heterogeneity of Moral Functioning in Preschool.

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 of moral scenarios presented both verbally and nonverbally; and (b) non-moral tasks assessing general cognitive skill, executive functioning, theory-of-mind, and emotion recognition. Shyness and empathic concern were assessed from video acquired during participation. Results demonstrated positive associations among distinct moral actions, as well as among distinct moral evaluation tasks, but few associations between tasks assessing moral actions and moral evaluation. Empathic concern and inhibitory control each emerged as important predictors of preschoolers' moral functioning.

Theory of mind in context: Mental-state representations for social evaluation.

Whereas Phillips and colleagues argue that knowledge representations are more basic than belief representations, we argue that an accurate analysis of what is fundamental to theory of mind may depend crucially on the context in which mental-state reasoning occurs. Specifically, we call for increased study of the developmental trajectory of mental-state reasoning within socially evaluative contexts.

Building a collaborative Psychological Science: Lessons learned from ManyBabies 1.

The field of infancy research faces a difficult challenge: some questions require samples that are simply too large for any one lab to recruit and test. ManyBabies aims to address this problem by forming large-scale collaborations on key theoretical questions in developmental science, while promoting the uptake of Open Science practices. Here, we look back on the first project completed under the ManyBabies umbrella - ManyBabies 1 - which tested the development of infant-directed speech preference. Our goal is to share the lessons learned over the course of the project and to articulate our vision for the role of large-scale collaborations in the field. First, we consider the decisions made in scaling up experimental research for a collaboration involving 100+ researchers and 70+ labs. Next, we discuss successes and challenges over the course of the project, including: protocol design and implementation, data analysis, organizational structures and collaborative workflows, securing funding, and encouraging broad participation in the project. Finally, we discuss the benefits we see both in ongoing ManyBabies projects and in future large-scale collaborations in general, with a particular eye towards developing best practices and increasing growth and diversity in infancy research and psychological science in general. Throughout the paper, we include first-hand narrative experiences, in order to illustrate the perspectives of researchers playing different roles within the project. While this project focused on the unique challenges of infant research, many of the insights we gained can be applied to large-scale collaborations across the broader field of psychology.

Do infant sociomoral evaluation and action studies predict preschool social and behavioral adjustment?

Recent studies suggest that infants and toddlers evaluate others based on their prosocial and antisocial behaviors and engage in prosocial behaviors themselves. It is unknown to what extent infants' responses in such studies reveal stable individual differences in social and/or moral competence that persist throughout development. The current study (N = 63) demonstrates that infants' performance in sociomoral evaluation and action studies (mean age = 12 months) predicts social and behavioral adjustment at age 4 years. Specifically, a stronger preference for moral actions as an infant was associated with parent reports of fewer callous-unemotional traits, the domain most conceptually related to sociomoral evaluation and action, during preschool. Critically, preschool moral adjustment was uniquely associated with infants' sociomoral responding and not with other more general aspects of infant functioning. When 2 children with an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis were included in the sample, correlations between infant and preschool functioning were more widespread. Taken together, these results provide evidence for developmental continuity in the sociomoral domain and suggest that infants' early behavioral tendencies may be building blocks for subsequent sociomoral development.

Preschoolers' social and moral judgments of third-party helpers and hinderers align with infants' social evaluations.

Two experiments explored preschoolers' social preferences and moral judgments of prosocial and antisocial others. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds (N=74) observed helping and hindering scenarios previously used to explore sociomoral evaluation in preverbal infants. Whereas 3-year-olds in Experiment 1 did not reliably distinguish between the helper and hinderer when reporting social preferences or moral judgments, both 4- and 5-year-olds preferred the helper, judged the helper to be "nicer" than the hinderer, selectively allocated punishment to the hinderer, and were able to justify their punishment allocations. A simplified procedure and the addition of comprehension questions in Experiment 2 (N=24) improved 3-year-olds' performance, suggestive that their performance in Experiment 1 was likely due to processing or memory difficulties rather than an inability to engage in explicit social and moral evaluation. These studies reveal that young children readily interpret helping and hindering scenarios as socially and morally relevant.

How infants and toddlers react to antisocial others.

Although adults generally prefer helpful behaviors and those who perform them, there are situations (in particular, when the target of an action is disliked) in which overt antisocial acts are seen as appropriate, and those who perform them are viewed positively. The current studies explore the developmental origins of this capacity for selective social evaluation. We find that although 5-mo-old infants uniformly prefer individuals who act positively toward others regardless of the status of the target, 8-mo-old infants selectively prefer characters who act positively toward prosocial individuals and characters who act negatively toward antisocial individuals. Additionally, young toddlers direct positive behaviors toward prosocial others and negative behaviors toward antisocial others. These findings constitute evidence that the nuanced social judgments and actions readily observable in human adults have their foundations in early developing cognitive mechanisms.

Not like me = bad: infants prefer those who harm dissimilar others.

Adults tend to like individuals who are similar to themselves, and a growing body of recent research suggests that even infants and young children prefer individuals who share their attributes or personal tastes over those who do not. In this study, we examined the nature and development of attitudes toward similar and dissimilar others in human infancy. Across two experiments with combined samples of more than 200 infant participants, we found that 9- and 14-month-old infants prefer individuals who treat similar others well and treat dissimilar others poorly. A developmental trend was observed, such that 14-month-olds' responses were more robust than were 9-month-olds'. These findings suggest that the identification of common and contrasting personal attributes influences social attitudes and judgments in powerful ways, even very early in life.

Social evaluation by preverbal infants.

The capacity to evaluate other people is essential for navigating the social world. Humans must be able to assess the actions and intentions of the people around them, and make accurate decisions about who is friend and who is foe, who is an appropriate social partner and who is not. Indeed, all social animals benefit from the capacity to identify individual conspecifics that may help them, and to distinguish these individuals from others that may harm them. Human adults evaluate people rapidly and automatically on the basis of both behaviour and physical features, but the ontogenetic origins and development of this capacity are not well understood. Here we show that 6- and 10-month-old infants take into account an individual's actions towards others in evaluating that individual as appealing or aversive: infants prefer an individual who helps another to one who hinders another, prefer a helping individual to a neutral individual, and prefer a neutral individual to a hindering individual. These findings constitute evidence that preverbal infants assess individuals on the basis of their behaviour towards others. This capacity may serve as the foundation for moral thought and action, and its early developmental emergence supports the view that social evaluation is a biological adaptation.

Socially evaluative contexts facilitate mentalizing.

Our ability to understand others' minds stands at the foundation of human learning, communication, cooperation, and social life more broadly. Although humans' ability to mentalize has been well-studied throughout the cognitive sciences, little attention has been paid to whether and how mentalizing differs across contexts. Classic developmental studies have examined mentalizing within minimally social contexts, in which a single agent seeks a neutral inanimate object. Such object-directed acts may be common, but they are typically consequential only to the object-seeking agent themselves. Here, we review a host of indirect evidence suggesting that contexts providing the opportunity to evaluate prospective social partners may facilitate mentalizing across development. Our article calls on cognitive scientists to study mentalizing in contexts where it counts.

Are Real-World Prosociality Programs Associated with Greater Psychological Well-Being in Primary School-Aged Children?

Quality education can build a sustainable, happier world, but what experiences support student well-being? Numerous laboratory studies suggest that prosocial behavior predicts greater psychological well-being. However, relatively little work has examined whether real-world prosociality programs are associated with greater well-being in primary school-aged children (aged 5-12). In Study 1, we surveyed 24/25 students who completed their 6th Grade curriculum in a long-term care home alongside residents called "Elders," which offered numerous opportunities for planned and spontaneous helping. We found that the meaning that students derived from their prosocial interactions with the Elders was strongly associated with greater psychological well-being. In Study 2, we conducted a pre-registered field experiment with 238 primary school-aged children randomly assigned to package essential items for children who experience homelessness and/or poverty who were either demographically similar or dissimilar in age and/or gender to them as part of a classroom outing. Children self-reported their happiness both pre- and post-intervention. While happiness increased from pre- to post-intervention, this change did not differ for children who helped a similar or dissimilar recipient. These studies offer real-world evidence consistent with the possibility that engaging in prosocial classroom activities-over an afternoon or year-is associated with greater psychological well-being in primary school-aged children.

How to build up big team science: a practical guide for large-scale collaborations.

The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of big team science (BTS), endeavours where a comparatively large number of researchers pool their intellectual and/or material resources in pursuit of a common goal. Despite this burgeoning interest, there exists little guidance on how to create, manage and participate in these collaborations. In this paper, we integrate insights from a multi-disciplinary set of BTS initiatives to provide a how-to guide for BTS. We first discuss initial considerations for launching a BTS project, such as building the team, identifying leadership, governance, tools and open science approaches. We then turn to issues related to running and completing a BTS project, such as study design, ethical approvals and issues related to data collection, management and analysis. Finally, we address topics that present special challenges for BTS, including authorship decisions, collaborative writing and team decision-making.

Infants' neural responses to helping and hindering scenarios.

A growing literature suggests infants prefer prosocial others over antisocial others. Although recent studies have begun to explore the neural mechanisms underlying these responses (Cowell and Decety, 2015; Gredebäck et al., 2015), these studies were based on relatively small samples and focused on distinct aspects of sociomoral responding. The current preregistered study systematically examined infants' neural responses both to prosocial/antisocial interactions and to prosocial/antisocial characters, using larger samples and two distinct age groups. We found that 6- (but not 12-) month-olds showed higher relative right frontal alpha power (indexing approach motivation) when viewing helping versus hindering scenarios. Consistent with past EEG work, infants showed no group-level manual preferences for the helper. However, analyses of infants' neural responses toward images of the helper versus hinderer revealed that both 6- and 12-month-olds showed differential event-related potential (ERP) responses in the P400 and N290 components (indexing social perception) but not in the Nc component (indexing attentional allocation), suggestive that infants' neural responses to prosocial versus antisocial characters reflect social processing. Together, these findings provide a more comprehensive account of infants' responses to prosocial/antisocial interactions and characters, and support the hypothesis that both motivational and socially relevant processes are implicated in infants' sociomoral responding.

Young infants prefer prosocial to antisocial others.

The current study replicates and extends the finding (Hamlin, Wynn & Bloom, 2007) that infants prefer individuals who act prosocially toward unrelated third parties over those who act antisocially. Using different stimuli from those used by Hamlin, Wynn & Bloom (2007), somewhat younger subjects, and 2 additional social scenarios, we replicated the findings that (a) infants prefer those who behave prosocially versus antisocially, and (b) these preferences are based on the social nature of the actions. The generality of infants' responses across multiple examples of prosocial and antisocial actions supports the claim that social evaluation is fundamental to perceiving the world.

A multi-lab study of bilingual infants: Exploring the preference for infant-directed speech.

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) than adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet, IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multi-site study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants' IDS preference. As part of the multi-lab ManyBabies 1 project, we compared lab-matched samples of 333 bilingual and 385 monolingual infants' preference for North-American English IDS (cf. ManyBabies Consortium, 2020: ManyBabies 1), tested in 17 labs in 7 countries. Those infants were tested in two age groups: 6-9 months (the younger sample) and 12-15 months (the older sample). We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. However, amongst bilingual infants who were acquiring North-American English (NAE) as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference, extending the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Together, our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes a similar contribution to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments.