Neuroscience
To view plagiarism as an adult does, a child must combine several pieces of a puzzle: they need to understand that not everyone has access to all ideas; that people can create their own ideas; and that stealing an idea, like stealing physical property, is wrong.
There's been plenty of research on children's understanding of physical property ownership, which has shown that a rudimentary understanding is already in place by age two. Now in the first ever systematic study of its kind, Kristina Olson and Alex Shaw at Yale have investigated children's understanding of the ownership of ideas.
Across three studies, Olson and Shaw presented children aged between three and eleven with vignettes and puppet videos in which two characters either both came up with their own idea for what to draw in art class, or one character copied what the other one had drawn. By age five to six, children showed less liking for characters who copied and rated them as 'more bad'. Crucially, they gave copying as their justification for these negative appraisals. 'These results demonstrate a relatively sophisticated understanding of ideas as early as age five years,' the researchers said.
By contrast, three- to four-year-olds did not rate characters who copied as any less likeable or any more bad than characters who came up with their own ideas. In a control condition, children of this age gave negative ratings to characters who stole physical property, thus showing that the the null result for stealing ideas wasn't because the children didn't understand the rating scale or weren't paying attention.
Future research is needed to find out if children younger than four don't understand the idea of original ideas or if they don't yet recognise that to steal ideas is wrong (or both). It's also not yet clear what drives the development of understanding in this area - is it a reflection of cognitive development or does it perhaps have to do with exposure to formal rules about copying at school. 'Our hope is that our idea about ideas is unique and will motivate future research,' the researchers concluded.
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Olson, K., and Shaw, A. (2010). ‘No fair, copycat!’: what children’s response to plagiarism tells us about their understanding of ideas. Developmental Science DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00993.x
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
By what age do children recognise that plagiarism is wrong?
There's been plenty of research on children's understanding of physical property ownership, which has shown that a rudimentary understanding is already in place by age two. Now in the first ever systematic study of its kind, Kristina Olson and Alex Shaw at Yale have investigated children's understanding of the ownership of ideas.
Across three studies, Olson and Shaw presented children aged between three and eleven with vignettes and puppet videos in which two characters either both came up with their own idea for what to draw in art class, or one character copied what the other one had drawn. By age five to six, children showed less liking for characters who copied and rated them as 'more bad'. Crucially, they gave copying as their justification for these negative appraisals. 'These results demonstrate a relatively sophisticated understanding of ideas as early as age five years,' the researchers said.
By contrast, three- to four-year-olds did not rate characters who copied as any less likeable or any more bad than characters who came up with their own ideas. In a control condition, children of this age gave negative ratings to characters who stole physical property, thus showing that the the null result for stealing ideas wasn't because the children didn't understand the rating scale or weren't paying attention.
Future research is needed to find out if children younger than four don't understand the idea of original ideas or if they don't yet recognise that to steal ideas is wrong (or both). It's also not yet clear what drives the development of understanding in this area - is it a reflection of cognitive development or does it perhaps have to do with exposure to formal rules about copying at school. 'Our hope is that our idea about ideas is unique and will motivate future research,' the researchers concluded.
_________________________________
Olson, K., and Shaw, A. (2010). ‘No fair, copycat!’: what children’s response to plagiarism tells us about their understanding of ideas. Developmental Science DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00993.xPost written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- At What Age Do Children Recognise The Difference Between Sarcasm And Irony?
People hold strong feelings about the meanings of irony and sarcasm. Just look at the reaction to Alanis Morissette's global hit 'ironic' - despite commercial success, the apparent misunderstanding of irony conveyed by the song provoked a...
- Little Comedians
Toddlers as young as 19 months are able to distinguish jokes from mistakes - a skill that lays the groundwork for their later ability to recognise lies and false beliefs. That's according to Elena Hoicka and Merideth Gattis, who tested a large group...
- Mothers' Reading Style Affects Children's Later Understanding Of Other People's Minds
The use of cognitive verbs like 'think', 'know', 'remember' and 'believe' by mothers when reading picture books to their children has a beneficial effect on their children's later ability to understand other people's...
- Do Young Children Understand Irony?
Some children as young as six already understand the idea that people make sarcastic remarks, saying one thing but meaning another, according to psychologists Penny Pexman and Melanie Glenwright. They presented 70 children aged between six and ten with...
- Children's Understanding Of The Internet
How much do young children understand about the internet? Zheng Yan at the University of Albany recruited 83 children, aged from 5 to 12 years, to find out how much they used and understood the internet. Children aged from five to eight years tended to...