Factors predicting the early development of social norms in children

Prosocial behaviour is believed to be crucial to our species' evolutionary success, and essential for children's successful social development. One factor that likely plays a role in our motivation to help and share is 'social norms'; learned behavioural rules which we follow because others in our social community expect us to follow them. Normative behaviour requires three main things; knowledge of norm content, a general motivation to conform to social norms and a specific sensitivity to social expectations. Though it is clear that the three components of normative behaviour start to emerge by about age 4-5 , we
still know little about the developmental processes supporting the emergence of this normative behaviour during this period. One possibility is that normativity is simply an elaboration of infants' capacities for imitation. An alternative is that normativity is built
upon humans' unique capacities for joint attention. Joint attention helps infants to take others' perspectives, as they observe that certain perspectives are labelled as "correct", this could facilitate their understanding of normative perspectives. Finally, it is also plausible that expanding theory of mind skills at this age are crucial to this understanding of normative perspectives, by helping children to understand beliefs and perspectives that are different from their own. My project aims to provide a direct empirical test of these alternatives, specifically within the context of prosocial behaviour.

This project aims to further our understanding of the factors that predict the early emergence of normative behaviour. More specifically I will address the following questions:
1. Is individual variation in knowledge of prosocial norm content in children aged 4-5 predicted by (i) imitation skills (both in infancy and early childhood); (ii) joint attention skills (in infancy); or (iii) theory of mind skills (in early childhood).
2. Is individual variation in conformity to norms in children aged 4-5 predicted by (i) imitation skills (both in infancy and early childhood); (ii) joint attention skills (in infancy); or (iii) theory of mind skills (in early childhood).
3. When does sensitivity to social expectations for prosocial behaviour emerge? Is it present in 4 year olds? If so, is individual variation in social expectation understanding in children aged 4-5 predicted by (i) imitation skills (both in infancy and early childhood); (ii) joint attention skills (in infancy); or (iii) theory of mind skills (in early childhood).

I aim to test children during 2 hour testing sessions in the York area at three timepoints, when they are 4, 4.5 and 5 years of age. I aim to include children who are currently part of a longitudinal cohort study run by Prof Slocombe, who have been followed since 3 months of age and will be turning 4 from October 2021-August 2021. Furthermore, if it becomes feasible during my PhD, I will also conduct fieldwork with a parallel longitudinal sample of children in Uganda. For this fieldwork, I would collect data at a single time point (age 4), which would add a cross-cultural component to my studies add valuably to my studies. During testing sessions, I will use experimental tasks to assess individual variation in three components of social norm development: norm knowledge, norm conformity and sensitivity to social expectations. This will give me measurements of the development of children's understanding of norms between ages 4 and 5 years of age. I will then predict individual variation in these measures of children's understanding of norms, using measures of those same children's skills with joint attention (in infancy), overimitation (in infancy and early childhood) and theory of mind (in early childhood). This will allow me to assess how the emergence of normative behaviour in early childhood rests upon the development of other socio-cognitive capacities in infancy and early childhood.