{"id":45672,"date":"2017-07-11T16:34:29","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T20:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=45672"},"modified":"2017-07-11T16:35:39","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T20:35:39","slug":"brock-study-finds-preschoolers-aim-to-keep-their-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2017\/07\/brock-study-finds-preschoolers-aim-to-keep-their-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock study finds preschoolers aim to keep their word"},"content":{"rendered":"

While some parents may think their requests go in one ear and out the other, a new Brock study suggests that children aged three to five will make an effort to do what is asked of them, especially after committing to the request out loud.<\/p>\n

Angela Evans, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, released the findings in \u201cVerbalizing a commitment reduces cheating in young children<\/a>,\u201d which was published in the May edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The study was developed in Brock\u2019s Social-Cognitive Development Lab along with Brock graduate student Alison O\u2019Connor and University of Toronto Professor Kang Lee.<\/p>\n

It was Evans\u2019 interest in how children are socialized to become honest that led the direction of her research.<\/p>\n

Other studies have shown that children over the age of five were more likely to be honest if they promised to tell the truth, but promises were shown to be ineffective in children under five.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>We thought that this was likely due to younger children\u2019s difficulty with understanding the word \u2018promise,\u2019\u201d Evans explained. \u201cWe were interested to see if we could improve children\u2019s honesty by asking them to state that they \u2018will\u2019 do something, rather than making them promise to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research team was also interested in \u201cwhether asking children to make a statement out loud, rather than just agreeing to a request to adhere to a rule, would improve honesty,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The study found that 80 per cent of children cheated by peeking at a toy after being told not to or agreeing not to peek. However, asking children to make a specific, verbal commitment out loud not to peek at the toy significantly reduced the rate of cheating to 58 per cent.<\/p>\n

It also took much longer for the children who spoke their intention aloud to sneak a look at the toy.<\/p>\n

This is good news for parents who want to help guide their children toward good behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen parents ask their children to behave in a particular way \u2014 \u2018don\u2019t touch the iPad while I am out of the room\u2019 \u2014 they shouldn\u2019t just tell the child the rule or ask them to agree to the rule,\u201d Evans said. Asking the child to state an intention out loud \u2014 \u2018I will not touch the iPad while you are gone\u2019 \u2014 can be a more effective strategy.<\/p>\n

Evans plans to continue exploring how verbalized commitments can shape behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to assess whether a verbalized commitment without the word \u2018promise\u2019 would be equally effective for older children, compared to asking them to promise,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are also interested in examining other novel methods for promoting honest behaviour with both children and adolescents.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While some parents may think their requests go in one ear and out the other, a new Brock study suggests that children aged three to five will make an effort to do what is asked of them, especially after committing to the request out loud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":45673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,188,1,4,5,38],"tags":[4020,29,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}