Social cognition in adults with neurofibromatosis type 1.

OBJECTIVE: Adult patients with the genetic disease neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) frequently report social difficulties. To date, however, only two studies have explored whether these difficulties are caused by social cognition deficits, and these yielded contradictory data. The aim of the present study was to exhaustively assess social cognition abilities (emotion, theory of mind, moral reasoning, and social information processing) in adults with NF1, compared with a control group, and to explore links between social cognition and disease characteristics (mode of inheritance, severity, and visibility). METHOD: We administered a social cognition battery to 20 adults with NF1 (mean age = 26.5 years, SD = 7.4) and 20 healthy adults matched for sociodemographic variables. RESULTS: Patients scored significantly lower than controls on emotion, theory of mind, moral reasoning, and social information processing tasks. No effects of disease characteristics were found. CONCLUSIONS: These results appear to confirm that adults with NF1 have a social cognition weaknesses that could explain, at least in part, their social difficulties, although social abilities are not all impaired to the same extent. Regarding the impact of the disease characteristics, the patient sample seemed slightly insufficient for the power analyses performed. Thus, this exploratory study should form the basis of further research, with the objective of replicating these results with larger and more appropriately matched samples.

Sensitivity to moral and conventional rules in temporal lobe epilepsy.

OBJECTIVES: Sensitivity to moral and conventional rules (SMCR) is supported by bilateral brain networks and psychosocial input both of which may be altered in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). This study evaluated the components of SMCR in patients with TLE, aiming to clarify their preservation and link to psychopathological and cognitive aspects. METHODS: Adult patients with unilateral TLE and healthy controls were evaluated using neuropsychological tests for SMCR, memory, language, and executive functions, the Empathy Questionnaire (EQ), and the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R). RESULTS: The SMCR test items showed good reliability and validity, yielding the Severity and Rules factors distinct from the Executive, Lexical and Memory factors. Patients with right TLE scored worse in moral rules recognition than controls, but this difference was nullified by a significant influence for age and sex. The Severity and Rules factors related to semantic fluency and age and, respectively, TLE side and psychoticism. However, these factors did predict TLE membership. CONCLUSIONS: In adult patients with TLE, the SMCR test reflects a distinct cognitive domain. Conventional rules are well-retained, while moral reasoning may be only affected in right TLE if unfavorable demographics coexist. Although age, TLE side, semantic abilities, and psychoticism cooperate to determine SMCR, impairment of such domain is not a distinctive feature of TLE.

The development of moral reasoning in urban, high-social class families from Gujarat, India: A longitudinal study from middle childhood to late adolescence.

The aims of the present study were to quantitatively test hypotheses based on the cultural-developmental approach among children and adolescents in Vadodara, India, and to use qualitative analyses to examine the use of indigenous moral concepts. The study included 72 participants who were interviewed at two different age points, separated by approximately 4.5 years. At Time 1, participants were in middle childhood (Mage = 8.22 years) and in early adolescence (Mage = 11.54 years). At Time 2, the same participants were in early adolescence (Mage = 12.87 years) and late adolescence (Mage = 15.77 years). Three findings stood out: (1) As expected, the degree of use of Autonomy increased over the course of adolescence, as did the types of moral concepts. (2) The degree of use of Community significantly increased from middle childhood to adolescence. Duty, within Community was evoked prominently and consistently across all age points suggesting that aspects of social membership emerge early in Indian children's moral reasoning and remain important through adolescence. (3) The use of Divinity was prominent in middle childhood and its use decreased significantly through early adolescence; with a trend for a decrease in its use from early to late adolescence. While much of the reasoning in middle childhood was dominated by a concern for Punishment Avoidance from God, by adolescence Customary Traditional Authority and God's Authority gained prominence. Findings highlight aspects of adolescent moral reasoning that are largely missing in Western studies and point to the utility of emic, indigenous approaches to study moral development.

Religious coping and delinquent behaviors: Moderated mediation roles of religion affiliation and prosocial moral reasoning.

Religion has been shown to have a positive impact for developing adolescents; however, the processes underlying this relation are not well known. In his almighty prosocial theory, Anazonwu (Conceptualizing and testing almighty prosociality theory for a more peaceful world, SCOA Heritage Nigeria, 2017) proposed that the activation of learnt prosocial moral reasoning through religion enabled performance of prosocial peace behavior that will benefit society. Thus, religion coping enhances the development of prosocial reasoning which in turn propagate prosocial acts while reducing delinquent behaviors. Similarly, developmental system theory (Lerner, Developmental science, developmental systems, and contemporary theories of human development, John Wiley & Sons, 2006) assumed that in every individual three mechanisms: plasticity (potential to change), context (environment), and developmental regulation (learnable principles) interact to describe the direction of the transactions between individuals and their various embedded sociocultural context of development which will also determine other developmental outcomes. Based on these two theoretical assumptions, the present study examined whether prosocial moral reasoning (developmental regulation) was the mechanism in the negative correlation between religious coping (plasticity) and delinquent behaviors (outcome), and if religious affiliation(context) (Christianity and Islam) moderated these paths. We hypothesized that the link from prosocial moral reasoning to lower delinquent behaviors would be stronger for Muslim compared with Christian youth. These questions were tested among Nigerian adolescence, an important sample because of high interreligious and interethnic tension among youth in the country. 298 adolescents (Mean age = 15.03 years, SD = 1.76; male = 176, female = 122; 46.3% Muslim, 53.7% Christian) were sampled using questionnaires in senior secondary schools in Nigeria. Moderated mediation result shows that greater religious coping was linked with higher prosocial moral reasoning, which in turn predicted fewer delinquent behaviors. Religious coping interacted with religion affiliation to influence delinquent behavior; there was a stronger link between these two constructs for Muslim compared to Christian youth. Thus, interventions aiming to reduce youth delinquent behaviors should consider promoting prosocial moral reasoning, particularly among the various religions (i.e., Christian/Muslim) communities.

The relationship between moral reasoning and nurses' professional values in undergraduate nursing students: a descriptive-correlational study.

BACKGROUND: Moral reasoning in nursing is crucial in delivering high-quality patient care and fostering increased job satisfaction among nurses. Adhering to professional values is vital to this profession, and nurses must modify their actions to align with these values. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the correlation between moral reasoning and professional values among undergraduate nursing students. RESEARCH DESIGN: A descriptive correlational design was recruited. PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT: The research was conducted at three nursing schools located in Tehran, Iran. The sample was recruited through random stratified sampling, specifically targeting undergraduate nursing students. The data collection tool comprised a three-part questionnaire, including a demographic information form, the Nursing Dilemma Test, and the Nurses Professional Values Scale Revised Questionnaire. The distribution of questionnaires encompassed both face-to-face and electronic methods. The analysis of data was conducted using SPSS 16 software. The data was analyzed using the independent samples t-test, Pearson's correlation coefficient, and linear regression analysis. The P value of 0.05 was considered significant. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: The Ethics Research Center of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences approved the study. FINDINGS: Data analysis showed that moral reasoning was directly correlated to professional values (r = 0.528, p < 0.001). The mean scores of Principled Thinking (P.T.), Practical Consideration (P.C.), and Familiarity with similar moral dilemmas of the NDT scale were 42.55 (SD = 12.95), 15.72 (SD = 6.85), 16.08 (SD = 6.67), respectively. Also, the total score of professional values of students was 90.63 (SD = 28.80). CONCLUSION: The findings indicated that moral reasoning and interest in nursing predict students' professional identity. Thus, any effort to enhance interest in the profession can contribute to developing students' professional identity. This can involve incentivizing, enhancing the professional reputation at the community and university levels, and valuing student preferences and necessities.

The effect and comparison of training in ethical decision-making through lectures and group discussions on moral reasoning, moral distress and moral sensitivity in nurses: a clinical randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Ethical decision­making and behavior of nurses are major factors that can affect the quality of nursing care. Moral development of nurses to making better ethical decision-making is an essential element for managing the care process. The main aim of this study was to examine and comparison the effect of training in ethical decision-making through lectures and group discussions on nurses' moral reasoning, moral distress and moral sensitivity. METHODS: In this randomized clinical trial study with a pre- and post-test design, 66 nurses with moral reasoning scores lower than the average of the community were randomly assigned into three equal groups (n = 22) including two experimental groups and one control group. Ethical decision-making training to experimental groups was provided through the lectures and group discussions. While, the control group did not receive any training. Data were collected using sociodemographic questionnaire, the nursing dilemma test (NDT), the moral distress scale (MDS) and the moral sensitivity questionnaire (MSQ). Unadjusted and adjusted binary logistic regression analysis was reported using the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: Adjusted regression analysis showed that the probability of increasing the nursing principle thinking (NPT) score through discussion training was significantly higher than lecture (OR: 13.078, 95% CI: 3.238-15.954, P = 0.008), as well as lecture (OR: 14.329, 95% CI: 16.171-2.005, P < 0.001) and discussion groups compared to the control group (OR: 18.01, 95% CI: 22.15-5.834, P < 0.001). The possibility of increasing moral sensitivity score through discussion training was significantly higher than lecture (OR: 10.874, 95%CI: 6.043-12.886, P = 0.005) and control group (OR: 13.077, 95%CI: 8.454-16.774, P = 0.002). Moreover, the moral distress score was significantly reduced only in the trained group compared to the control, and no significant difference was observed between the experimental groups; lecture group vs. control group (OR: 0.105, 95% CI: 0.015-0.717, P = 0.021) and discussion group vs. control group (OR: 0.089, 95% CI: 0.015-0.547, P = 0.009). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that ethical decision-making training is effective on empowerment of ethical reasoning. Whereas the group discussion was also effective on increasing the ethical sensitivity, it is recommended the training plan provided in this study to be held as workshop for all nurses in health and treatment centers and placed in curricular plan of nursing students. REGISTRATION: This randomized clinical trial was registered in Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials under code (IRCT2015122116163N5) in 02/07/2016.

Multidimensional profiles of Head Start children's social behaviors predict their interpretations of physical aggression.

Preschool children's reasoning regarding moral events differs according to adversity and relates to aggression. Understanding morality in young children is paramount for understanding their aggressive behaviors. The study aims to identify patterns of aggression and prosocial behavior using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and investigate how patterns of aggression and prosocial behavior relate to reasoning about prototypic moral events. One hundred six children (Mage = 4.40 years old, SD = 0.55 years old, Range: 3.08-5.33 years old, 51% boys) enrolled in Head Start programs and their caregivers participated. In the fall caregivers completed surveys on forms (i.e., the manifestation of behavior) and functions of aggression (i.e., motivation of behavior), and prosocial behavior. The following spring children completed two moral reasoning tasks that measured children's judgment and reasoning of harm, and their attributions of transgressors' reasoning. The LCA revealed a 3-class solution: (1) high levels of relational aggression and moderate levels of prosocial behavior (bistrategic controllers), (2) low levels of both aggression and average prosocial behavior (uninvolved), (3) high levels of all types of aggression and low levels of prosocial behavior (high aggression). Subsequent analyses suggest that uninvolved children prioritize adhering to authority over other concerns, and bistrategic controllers focused on goal-oriented reasoning. Overall, our findings support that recognizing patterns of behavior may be useful in understanding children's moral reasoning.

How the COVID-19 pandemic affects the moral reasoning of pediatric residents and the general population.

BACKGROUND: Kohlberg's theory of moral development asserts that people progress through different stages of moral reasoning as their cognitive abilities and social interactions mature. Individuals at the lowest stage of moral reasoning (preconventional stage) judge moral issues based on self-interest, those with a medium stage (conventional stage) judge them based on compliance with rules and norms, and those at the highest stage (postconventional stage) judge moral issues based on universal principles and shared ideals. Upon attaining adulthood, it can be considered that there is stability in the stage of individuals' moral development; however, the effect of a global population crisis such as the one experienced in March 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic, is unknown. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the changes in the moral reasoning of pediatric residents before and after one year of the COVID-19 pandemic and compare them with a general population group. METHODS: This is a naturalistic quasi-experimental study conducted with two groups, one comprised 47 pediatric residents of a tertiary hospital converted into a COVID hospital during the pandemic and another group comprised 47 beneficiaries of a family clinic who were not health workers. The defining issues test (DIT) was applied to the 94 participants during March 2020, before the pandemic initiated in Mexico, and later during March 2021. To assess intragroup changes, the McNemar-Bowker and Wilcoxon tests were used. RESULTS: Pediatric residents showed higher baseline stages of moral reasoning: 53% in the postconventional group compared to the general population group (7%). In the preconventional group, 23% were residents and 64% belonged to the general population. In the second measurement, one year after the start of the pandemic, the group of residents had a significant decrease of 13 points in the P index, unlike the general population group in which a decrease of 3 points was observed. This decrease however, did not equalize baseline stages. Pediatric residents remained 10 points higher than the general population group. Moral reasoning stages were associated with age and educational stage. CONCLUSIONS: After a year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found a decrease in the stage of moral reasoning development in pediatric residents of a hospital converted for the care of patients with COVID-19, while it remained stable in the general population group. Physicians showed higher stages of moral reasoning at baseline than the general population.

Preschool children's evaluations of their own unjustified requests.

To make a fair request, requesters should consider the perspective of the requestee and contrast his or her needs with their own needs. Making an unjustified request (e.g., requesting something we do not need but the requestee does need) can induce some negative feelings such as guilt. Here, we investigated whether making unjustified requests resulted in negative emotions in 3- and 5-year-old children. Participants (N = 83; 34 girls) requested resources that they did or did not need from an experimenter who either did or did not need them. Both age groups were slower and more hesitant to make an unjustified request (children did not need the sticker, but the experimenter did) and also showed lowered body posture when making an unjustified request compared with when making a justified request (children needed the sticker, but the experimenter did not). Three-year-olds showed more pronounced changes in their posture, whereas 5-year-olds' emotional expression was overall more blunted. Rather, older children relied more on verbal indirect utterances (e.g., "You've got lovely stickers"), as opposed to direct requests (e.g., "Can I have that sticker?"), when making unjustified requests. These results suggest that preschool children already apply impartial normative standards to their requests for help, account for the fairness of their requests, and consider the needs of others when requesting.

Disagreement, justification, and equitable moral judgments: A brief training study.

Although theorists agree that social interactions play a major role in moral development, previous research has not experimentally assessed how specific features of social interactions affect children's moral judgments and reasoning. The current study assessed two features: disagreement and justification. In a brief training phase, children aged 4-5.5 years (N = 129) discussed simple moral scenarios about issues of fairness (how to allocate things between individuals) with a puppet who, in a between-participants factorial design, either agreed or disagreed with the children's ideas and either asked or did not ask the children to justify their ideas. Children then responded to another set of moral scenarios in a test phase that was the same for all children. Children in the "agree and do not justify" baseline condition showed an inflexible equality bias (preferring only equal allocations regardless of context), but children who had experiences of disagreement or experiences of being asked to justify themselves shifted toward making equitable decisions based on common ground norms and values. Furthermore, false belief competence was related to children's decisions and justifications. These findings support the classic Piagetian hypothesis that social interactions are a catalyst of cognitive disequilibrium and moral development.

Children's judgments of and reasoning about people with disabilities who produce norm violations.

People with disabilities may behave in non-normative ways because they cannot act otherwise. This study explored whether U.S. children aged 3.00 to 8.99 years (N = 105) differ in their evaluations of people who commit norm violations when those persons have perceptual or physical disabilities. Across 12 scenarios, children were asked to explain different characters' non-normative behaviors and to evaluate each character's naughtiness. Characters were typically developing, had a physical disability, or had a hearing disability. Disabilities were described to participants but were not visually depicted. Across moral and conventional norm violations, children aged 4.5 years and older judged characters with disabilities as less naughty than characters without disabilities, whereas younger children (3 and 4 years) judged all characters as equally naughty. Children's explanations for characters' non-normative behaviors (acknowledging characters' physical/auditory limitations and inferring negative attributes) significantly predicted their naughtiness judgments; this was true for participants across the sampled age range. Thus, preschool children demonstrated flexibility in their moral judgments across a variety of everyday behavioral violations, tempering their negative evaluations of persons who committed non-normative behaviors when those persons had unseen disabilities that could reasonably account for their actions. Parents and teachers may be able to build on these early moral intuitions to foster greater acceptance of persons with disabilities.

Acceptable objectives of empirical research in bioethics: a qualitative exploration of researchers' views.

BACKGROUND: This is the first qualitative study to investigate how researchers, who do empirical work in bioethics, relate to objectives of empirical research in bioethics (ERiB). We explore reasons that make some objectives more acceptable, while others are deemed less acceptable. METHODS: Using qualitative exploratory study design, we interviewed bioethics researchers, who were selected to represent different types of scholars working in the field. The interview data of 25 participants were analyzed in this paper using thematic analysis. RESULTS: From the eight objectives presented to the study participants, understanding the context of a bioethical issue and identifying ethical issues in practice received unanimous agreement. Participants also supported other objectives of ERiB but with varying degrees of agreement. The most contested objectives were striving to draw normative recommendations and developing and justifying moral principles. The is-ought gap was not considered an obstacle to ERiB, but rather a warning sign to critically reflect on the normative implications of empirical results. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that the most contested objectives are also the more ambitious ones, whereas the least contested ones focus on producing empirical results. The potential of empirical research to be useful for bioethics was mostly based on the reasoning pattern that empirical data can provide a testing ground for elements of normative theory. Even though empirical research can inform many parts of bioethical inquiry, normative expertise is recommended to guide ERiB. The acceptability of ambitious objectives for ERiB boils down to finding firm ground for the integration of empirical facts in normative inquiry.

The Influence of Sociocultural Beliefs on Adolescents' Moral and Tolerance Evaluations Toward Corruption.

In the present research, we examine how sociocultural beliefs facilitate more positive and tolerant evaluations toward corruption. Ninety-six adolescents from 6th grade (M = 11.9 years), 11th grade (M = 16.6 years), and college (M = 20.5 years), from Colombia-a country with high levels of corruption-evaluated how morally right and acceptable were bribery and nepotism across a baseline condition without sociocultural information, and three experimental conditions including sociocultural beliefs about illegality, institutional illegitimacy, and survival. Results suggest that compared to the baseline, the sociocultural beliefs in the three experimental conditions lead to more positive and tolerant evaluations, and less severity and more acceptability towards corruption in different degrees. Implications for moral reasoning about corruption are discussed.

Longitudinal paths between parents' use of rewards and young adolescents' moral traits and prosocial behaviors.

BACKGROUND: Although prior research shows supportive evidence that parental practices are associated with adolescents' prosocial behaviors, limited evidence exists on the effects of parents' use of social and material rewards on distinct forms of prosocial behaviors, and the mediating effects of sociocognitive and socioemotive traits in these relations. AIMS: The present study was designed to examine the longitudinal relations among parents' use of social and material rewards, youth prosocial traits, and prosocial behaviors. MATERIALS & METHODS: Participants were 417 adolescents (M age = 14.70 years; 225 girls) from Valencia, Spain who completed surveys on parents' use of social and material reward practices, prosocial moral reasoning, empathic concern, and six types of prosocial behaviors. RESULTS: Path analyses showed that parents' use of social rewards was indirectly, positively related to emotional, dire, altruistic, public (negatively), and compliant prosocial behaviors via empathic concern. The use of social rewards was also indirectly positively linked to altruistic prosocial behaviors via both empathic concern and prosocial moral reasoning. In contrast, parents' use of material rewards predicted less prosocial moral reasoning, which in turn, was linked to more altruistic, prosocial behaviors. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: The implications for parental socialization and self-determination theories of prosocial and moral development are discussed.

Coping with COVID-19: Insights from cognition and emotion research.

Since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing efforts to contain its spread have caused major problems with public health, along with social and economic disruptions. This Special Issue addresses how coping with the pandemic has been shaped by the interplay between cognition and emotion. The various contributions to this Special Issue explore the impacts of the pandemic on: (a) How people were confronted with new risks and realities; (b) Active processes of emotional resilience and ruminative coping; and c) Moral decision-making. Taken together, this work shows how research on cognition and emotion can illuminate the social and emotional strains of the pandemic, while helping to identify risk factors that exacerbate these problems and pointing to ways to successfully address and mitigate these problems, such as emotion regulation, social support, and perspective taking. The editorial closes by briefly reporting on the present state of the journal and changes in the editorial team.

The 'good' of extending fertility: ontology and moral reasoning in a biotemporal regime of reproduction.

Since the emergence of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a specific set of technologies has been developed to address the problem of the 'biological clock'. The medical extension of fertility time is accompanied by promissory narratives to help women synchronize conflicting biological and social temporalities. This possibility also has a transgressive potential by blurring one of the biological landmarks - the menopause - by which reproductive lives are organized and governed. These new ways of managing, measuring and controlling reproductive time have renewed debates on the age limits of motherhood and the moral legitimacy of medical intervention into age-related fertility decline. Building on Amir's feminist concept of biotemporality, this paper questions what happens when the ontological foundations of age-limited motherhood are disrupted by technologies which allow fertility to be extended. It discusses the reconfigurations of the ontological boundaries of the facts of life in the light of literature on reproductive technologies and temporality. Through the Swiss experience, the paper shows how medical experts are drawn into negotiating the ontological boundaries of age-limited motherhood along the binaries of the normal/pathological and the biological/social. Questioning the purpose of medical interventions in what are seen as facts of life, they produce different configurations of moral reasoning where what is natural undergoes shifts which both reinforce the normative order and subvert it.

Death in Advance? A critique of the "Zombification" of people with dementia.

This contribution sets out to criticize the prominent metaphor of "death while alive" in the context of dementia. We first explain the historical origin and development as well as the philosophical premises of the image. We then take a closer look at its implications for understanding dementia and societal attitudes and behaviours towards those affected. In doing so, we adopt a life course perspective that seeks to account for the ethical significance of the temporal extension and structure of human life. According to this perspective, individual existence in time is characterized by normative standards of age-appropriate behavior, evaluative standards of a good life, and teleological notions of successful development which require theoretical analysis and ethical discussion. Such a perspective can contribute significantly to spelling out the implications of the metaphor of death while alive and to criticizing their problematic aspects. Indeed, it makes clear that this metaphor aligns dementia with a different point in the human life course, thus ultimately framing it as a kind of deviation from the biographical norm, a disruption in an assumed temporal order of existence. At the same time, the life course perspective can help to understand why this conception involves ethically problematic distortions and blind spots. The resulting considerations allow conclusions with regard to medical and care ethical debates about self-determination, surrogate decision making, and advance directives in the context of dementia. Furthermore, on a theoretical-conceptual level, they also illustrate the importance of a biography- and culture-sensitive approach to philosophical and ethical reasoning in biomedicine and the life sciences.

Establishing a role of the semantic control network in social cognitive processing: A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies.

The contribution and neural basis of cognitive control is under-specified in many prominent models of socio-cognitive processing. Important outstanding questions include whether there are multiple, distinguishable systems underpinning control and whether control is ubiquitously or selectively engaged across different social behaviours and task demands. Recently, it has been proposed that the regulation of social behaviours could rely on brain regions specialised in the controlled retrieval of semantic information, namely the anterior inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus. Accordingly, we investigated for the first time whether the neural activation commonly found in social functional neuroimaging studies extends to these 'semantic control' regions. We conducted five coordinate-based meta-analyses to combine results of 499 fMRI/PET experiments and identified the brain regions consistently involved in semantic control, as well as four social abilities: theory of mind, trait inference, empathy and moral reasoning. This allowed an unprecedented parallel review of the neural networks associated with each of these cognitive domains. The results confirmed that the anterior left IFG region involved in semantic control is reliably engaged in all four social domains. This supports the hypothesis that social cognition is partly regulated by the neurocognitive system underpinning semantic control.

Moms know best?: Children's evaluations of mothers' unfair responses to peer conflicts.

Research on children's evaluations of parental discipline or parental responses to peer conflicts has focused on parents' responses to hypothetical or actual child behavior. These parent behaviors are typically depicted as fair, reasonable, and appropriate, but what if they are not? In daily life, parents do sometimes act unfairly, or children evaluate parents' responses as such. This study examined 90 4.5- to 10-year-old U.S. middle-class children's (Mage = 7.42 years, SD = 1.70) evaluations of four scenarios describing hypothetical mothers' unfair responses to peer conflicts (unjustified stealing; intentional harm; accidental harm; ambiguous harm). Across ages, children overwhelmingly judged mothers' directives, particularly regarding a straightforwardly immoral demand (unjustified stealing), as wrong and very unfair, based primarily on moral justifications or coordinated justifications involving recognition of different competing moral (or moral and nonmoral) concerns. With age, children increasingly viewed directives to retaliate for intended harm as more fair and those regarding ambiguous harm as more unfair; justifications recognizing different concerns also increased with age, although more for retaliation for accidental and intended harm than for other situations. Children largely endorsed disobedience and attributed negative emotions to actors who were described as complying. Thus, children prioritized moral concerns over obedience to authority when mothers asserted authority unfairly, although their responses showed variability with age and the situational context.

Conscience and theory of mind in children aged 4 to 7 years.

Associations between three dimensions of early conscience-moral reasoning, the capacity to experience guilt, and the moral self-and theory of mind (ToM) were examined in children aged 4-7 years (N = 80). Participants were administered a task assessing their understanding of the intentions and actions of a transgressor in situations entailing intentional and accidental wrongdoing, a moral self scale, and a battery of first-order and second-order false belief tasks. Children's capacity to experience guilt was measured via parent report. Expressive vocabulary was also measured. Repeated-measures analysis of covariance with ToM, age, and their interaction as covariates revealed that children who had higher ToM scores attributed more positive intentions to the accidental transgressor than to the intentional transgressor and judged the intentional transgressor's action as more wrongful than children who scored lower on these tasks. Ηierarchical regression analyses also indicated that a more advanced ToM performance predicted higher levels of guilt and the moral self after accounting for age and expressive vocabulary.