On the Nature of Toddlers' Helping: Helping or Interest in Others' Activity?

Toddlers' helping has been interpreted as early evidence of cooperation and altruism. We consider whether this important social activity might, instead, be due to toddlers' interest in participating in the activity of others, and we illustrate this possibility with diary observations of infants' social and communicative development. This alternative view of toddlers' helping as one manifestation of a more-general tendency for social engagement requires a different approach to the explanation of this aspect of social development. We argue for a relational developmental systems account of the emergence and further development of infants' social and emotional engagement leading to toddlers' helping.