Nadia Chernyak, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University, is visiting our lab today and giving a talk in the afternoon. She studies social-cognitive development in early childhood.
Here is the title and abstract of her talk:
Learning through doing: Children’s learning about morality through choice
Date: Friday, September 12 at 4:00pm
Location: AKW 200, 51 Prospect Street
Choice is critical for a variety of positive developmental outcomes, including self-esteem, well-being, and intrinsic motivation. The intuition that our actions are freely chosen is also important for our causal reasoning and our moral evaluations of others. In this talk I explore the interplay between young children’s concepts of choice and their emerging morality. I’ll first discuss whether young children reflect on their own actions as freely chosen. I’ll then turn to developmental and cultural variations in our concepts of choice. Finally, I’ll discuss 1) how (and why) choice serves as a mechanism that encourages internal motivation, and how it might influence prosocial behavior in early childhood, and 2) whether choice might be a domain-general way of learning about ourselves and others.