Journal
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Volume 22, Issue 1, Pages 110-123Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2006.07.001
Keywords
conceptual development; moral knowledge; scientific knowledge; division of cognitive labor
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Moral development research has often focused on the development of moral reasoning without considering children's understanding of moral advisors. We investigated how children construe sources of moral advice by examining the characteristics that children deem necessary for reasoning about moral or scientific problems. In two experiments, children in grades K, 2, and 4 were presented with dilemmas of a moral nature or scientific nature and chose between two advisors. Second and fourth graders chose advisors differentially based on their expertise, while kindergartners did not discriminate between advisors. In a third experiment, older children indicated that only certain characteristics are needed to solve moral or scientific problems, and they endorsed these characteristics differentially based on the problem to be solved. Thus, by middle childhood, children construe moral knowledge as distinct from scientific knowledge and select advisors in each area accordingly. (C) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available