Prosocial development in toddlerhood

Abstract

The paper presents an overview of current research on the specifc prosocial development within the toddlerhood period. We have analyzed three studied types of possible helping behavior in the early period of life: instrumental helping, sharing and empathy. The ability to help others in reaching and bringing objects, i.e., instrumental helping, appears at the beginning of the second year of life and develops rapidly through its second half [Warneken, Tomasello 2006; 2007]. Sharing or altruistic behavior emerges later on in the range of 18-24 months [Brownell at al. 2013], however, often in limited forms, for example, after another's clear articulation of wants [Brownell at al. 2009; 2013]. At last, empathetic behavior as a prosocial act appears in the ontogenesis [Dunfeld, Kuhlmeier 2013]. At the same time, the child is able to produce empathetic help only in situation of an evident reason for the other's negative-emotional state [Svetlova et al. 2010; Dunfeld et al. 2011]. As a whole, current research data in this feld show us that the ability for instrumental helping prevails within prosocial development in early childhood, while sharing and empathetic acts are rather limited in this age and often depend on a number of special factors.