Scaffold infant participation in everyday activities with positive affect, encouragement, and guidance adapted to the child's developmental level¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 1 study (1 review), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 1 claim rests on one study

Description¶

Caregivers support early helping by complementing, encouraging, guiding, and praising infants' participation in everyday caregiving activities and chores. "Positive affect and encouragement co-occur with infants' participation in early helping routines, supporting and maintaining helpful activities." As children become more skilled, adults shift toward pointing, verbal messages, and references to needs, and praise and thanking become less common during the second year.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Everyday caregiving and household activities in which infants can participate, and caregiver responsiveness to infants' demonstrated interest

Constraints¶

• Parents do not insist that infants participate; support is given when infants demonstrate interest, and explicit praise declines in the second year

Target Learners¶

• infants and toddlers from the first year through the third year of life

Target Learning Goals¶

• emerging helping behavior and, later, prosocial motives to promote others' welfare

Affordances¶

• Bidirectional Socialization Prosociality Account

Claims¶

• Repeated encouragement and praise causally increased 13- and 14-month-olds' helping of an adult who dropped an object [+M]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Dahl A., Brownell C. A. (2019). The Social Origins of Human Prosociality. Current Directions in Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419830386