Monthly Archives: February 2019

Ownership in children’s justifications. Friedman and Nancekivell

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Nancekivell, S. E., Van de Vondervoort, J. W., & Friedman, O. (2013). Young Children’s Understanding of Ownership. Child Development Perspectives, 7(4), 243–247.

This study uses a very simple experimental design to explore how children (ages 3 through 5) use ownership in their explanations about why it is acceptable or unacceptable for a person to use an object. They do three experiments.

In the first two experiments, ownership is not mentioned to children, and researchers test whether children bring up ownership spontaneously in their explanations.

In Experiment 1, researchers focused on the “right of use”, that is, whether it is acceptable for a certain character to use a certain object.

Experiment 2 is similar to experiment 1, but it focuses on the “right of exclusion” (someone shouldn’t use something because it belongs to someone else).

Experiment 3 provides children with explicit information about ownership before asking about acceptability and unacceptability of use.

The conclusions are that, as children grow older, they become more likely to use ownership to explain why it acceptable or unacceptable to use an object. 3-year-olds rarely referenced ownership, while 5-year-olds referenced ownership in almost half of their explanations. 5-year-olds gave ownership explanations more than any other particular kind of explanation (and this is not the case in younger children).

4- and 5-year-olds gave ownership explanations at similar rates regardless of whether ownership was mentioned. However, whether ownership was mentioned (experiment 3) did influence 3-year-olds: When 3-year-old explained why it was unacceptable to use an object, they referenced ownership more often when it was mentioned than when it was not mentioned. 3-year-olds gave more ownership explanations in the unacceptability-of-use condition.

We should emphasize that it all hangs in the narrative context. Children might reference ownership more if asked about why a person is allowed to modify an object; but they might reference ownership less if asked about gender typed objects or objects that are potentially dangerous, as other explanatory factors might be more compelling for such items (i.e., gender norms; safety concerns).

I’m interested in this topic because I think that ownership plays an important role in the development of reasoning. Rather thank considering reasoning as a cognitive, cold faculty that is applied to the domain of ownership, I believe that reasoning develops in the context of the rhetorical fight for object possession (competition, sharing, adjudication of ownership, etc.) Children feel authorized to give permission, forbid, and reason about objects in general in so far as they can appropriate those objects and feel that they are their own. The fact that ownership appears spontaneously in children’s reasoning is therefore relevant for my research interests.

Property transfers and property rights. Kim & Kalish.

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Kim, S., & Kalish, C. W. (2009). Children’s ascriptions of property rights with changes of ownership. Cognitive Development, 24(3), 322–336. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.COGDEV.2009.03.004

The article starts with a claim that I fully endorse: that ownership is an institutional (as opposed to a “brute”) fact. The term “institutional” is here obviously used in the sense it has in John Searle’s philosophy of social reality. However, the authors distort this concept of ownership as an institution in that they make ownership depend almost exclusively on people’s intentions. As they put it: “Giving someone an object to hold, to borrow, or “for keeps” may all involve the same physical motions. It is the intentions of the parties involved that determine whether ownership has been transferred.”

Searle’s is not a subjectivist approach. Intentionality is an important aspect of institutions, yes, but intentions are not free-floating entities. Thus, for a sale to take place, it’s not enough to have the intention to sell, one also needs to meet a number of objective conditions (such as being the previous owner of the object one is selling) as well as performing certain acts in a proper manner (stating that one wants to sell an item; receiving the money and handing out the item; performing certain speech acts, etc.) Intentions are an aspect of a broader, social reality, and they are interpreted according to social practices. Social institutions are not made of human intentions only; they are the product of constitutive rules (Searle’s term), which determine the meaning of certain actions. The paper’s reduction of institutions to intentions is an error frequently observed in psychologists.

Another problem with this paper is the hazy discussion of previous research in the introduction. The authors quote several sources that connect the concepts of current possession, first possession and ownership, but the precise meaning of such connections is not clear. Thus, they quote Shantz (1981), who claims that possession is “nine-tenths of a law,” a saying that suggests that a possessor has an advantageous legal position when claiming property, without explaining how this phrase applies to children and the development of ownership. They also quote Furby (1978), who found that “owners having or keeping the object” was “central to definitions of ownership throughout elementary school years,” establishing again a vague relationship between possession and ownership. What does “central to” mean? Are they implying that children confuse or mix up possession and ownership? Or, alternatively, that children distinguish one from the other, while justifying ownership claims by referring to current physical control of the object? Further, the authors quote Cram and Ng (1989), who found that 4–5-year-old children’s conception of ownership was related to physical contact. What does “related to” mean here? Over and over again, they suggest a close relationship between possession and ownership but do not clarify how this relationship operates in children.

To make things more confusing, they then proceed to quote research demonstrating that children use previous possession to justify current ownership. “Preschool children recognize that ownership is more than immediate physical contact. (…) Toddlers and preschoolers accept, “I had it first” as a basis for settling property disputes, and initial possessors typically prevail”. But then, which one is more important to justify ownership: current possession or previous possession? How do previous and current possession relate to each other, according to extant research? To sum up, the introduction provides a very confusing developmental account of the relationships between previous possession, current possession and ownership.

They then tackle their specific topic: property transfers. “Recent evidence suggests that 4-year-olds are beginning to accept transfer of rights at least in one highly ritualized context: receiving a birthday present.” However, “studies have not carefully articulated the criteria for establishing that ownership was actually transferred. In particular, conclusions that children do understand transfer are based on their assigning some rights to receivers” but without the givers losing those rights. “Both buyers and gift recipients can take the goods home.”

Apparently, then, young children accept that recipients gain property rights but deny that givers relinquish rights. If so, then young children understand ownership transfers as a kind of lending. The recipient is allowed to use the property, but the original owner retains ultimate control. A true understanding of ownership transfer, however, requires that original owners be seen as losing their original property rights. The authors propose to use the judgment that the recipient has a stronger claim on the property than the original owner as the key indicator of a true transfer of ownership.

Experiment 1

Each participant heard three stories about conflict between an owner and a non-owner over doing something with an object. The conflicts varied according to the types of transfer at stake: finding, borrowing, selling. Participants were asked about the characters’ right to novel use, re-categorization, alteration, lending (to a third person), and discarding the object. For example, in the discard condition they were asked: “Who should get to decide whether throw away the hat or not?”

The researchers found that adults and older children judged that original owners had control in the finding and borrowing stories, and that new owners (buyers) had control in the selling story.  Younger children showed a similar pattern but were less consistent in privileging new owners in the selling story.

In owner–finder and owner–borrower stories, participants of all ages reliably assigned control to the owner. Transfers of physical possession do not constitute changes in ownership/property rights. Agents who found or borrowed property did not acquire the rights to use it against the wishes of the original owners. This is the case for practically all participants.

Now, older children and adults reliably indicated that new owners (buyers) could control property against the wishes of original owners (sellers). Young children, however, selected owners significantly less often in conflicts with sellers than in conflicts with borrowers or finders. That is, a person receiving ownership via transfer does not have the same rights to control property as someone retaining original ownership. Even younger children, however, treated buyers as having more control than finders or borrowers. They saw buyers as owners that are not granted unlimited control of their property.

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 is similar to experiment 1, but now participants evaluated two instances of the same dispute, involving the same people, actions, and objects: once before and once after a transfer of ownership occurred. Instead of different types of actions (lending, discarding, etc.) here researchers used just one alteration of the object (cutting out a magazine, coloring a picture) and varied the agents’ ability (good at coloring vs. bad at coloring). Experiment 2 directly examined ownership transfer—losing and gaining ownership rights.

It was found that, with increasing age, participants more reliably judged that owners could assert control of their property against the wishes of non-owners.

Preschool-aged children showed one of two patterns. 1) They either appreciated owners’ rights or 2) they rejected any attempt to alter the objects.

1) When young children endorsed property rights, they did so by using the same criteria as adults and older children. Young children were not likely to assign control to original owners. Current ownership, whether initial or transferred, was the only thing that enabled control of property. Children do not indiscriminately adopt a “first-owner” principle, nor do they respond according to the intrinsic value of proposed actions. Rather, young children keep track of the ownership across transfers and assign rights accordingly, at least in the context of gift-giving.

2) The other response pattern was a denial that any character could exert control of an object over the objections of another. Thus, some younger children rejected all proposals. They denied control to original owners as well as recipient owners. Whenever young children assigned control to one actor rather than another they did so in the same way as did adults (pattern 1); that is, only ownership status was ever used as the basis for assigning property rights.

General conclusion

A majority of participants (including all adults) reliably indicated that an owner could control their property against the wishes of a non-owner. Participants responded that non-owners ought to defer to the wishes of owners regarding the use, alteration, lending, and disposal of those objects.

The researchers found that young children’s judgments are consistent with a “first-owner” model to a limited extent. Preschoolers often judged that initial owners retained some rights to their property; the rights of buyers or recipients of gifts were limited. For this reason, young children were less consistent in assigning owners control of property than were adults. However, the results also indicate that young children agreed with older children and adults in their identifications of ownership. They designated recipients as the owners in cases of gift-giving and buying, but not in cases of borrowing or finding.

The present study suggests developmental continuity in identification of ownership, although young children may have different ideas about what owners can do with their property, that is, they apply the concept of property and coordinate property rights together with other considerations such as outcomes, fairness, object attachment and interpersonal relationships differently from adults. The major difference between children and adults seems to be that adults have most clearly distinguished ownership rights from other considerations that affect decisions about property.

There is also the problem of narrative context. The stories may have involved more than ownership rights. Many young children may not distinguish what owners may and may not do from other considerations, such as what friends may and may not do. Structuring the narratives in a different way may yield quite different results.

One problem: other studies have found a strong first possessor bias in children, and claim that children do not fully understand ownership transfers until they are 10 years-old. Who is right then? Check: https://mind-cult.com/2019/02/16/exploring-the-first-possessor-bias-in-children-nole-keil/

Ultimatum and dictator in four-year-olds

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Lucas, M., Wagner, L., & Chow, C. (2008). Fair game: The intuitive economics of resource exchange in four-year olds. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, And, 2(3), 74–88. Retrieved from http://137.140.1.71/jsec/articles/volume2/issue3/JSEC2-3_Lucas.pdf

This is an interesting paper in an area that needs more research, namely, how children perform in economic games. The typical questions go as follows: Are children altruistic? Are they selfish?

The authors review and criticize some of the relevant previous research. Murnighan & Saxon (1998) found that kindergartners made larger ultimatum offers and accepted smaller ultimatum offers of candy than did third or sixth graders. However, Lucas et. al argue that Murnighan & Saxon’s results are probably not valid since they use a kind of simulated game, in which the child is asked to imagine that another child offers such and such amount of candy (instead of actually playing the ultimatum game). They also quote Harbaugh, Krause, & Liday (2003), who found that seven-year olds made and accepted smaller ultimatum proposals than adults; and Hill and Sally (2006), who found that 6-year-olds already make offers as fair as those of adults after repeated rounds of play. Benenson, Pascoe and Radmore (2007), on the other hand, found that very young children can be altruistic when playing dictator (4-year-olds donated, on average, 25% of a stake of ten stickers to another classmate).

The authors also mention a problem with some of the previous research: often, researchers make children play with tokens that have no inherent value; children are explained that they will be able to trade the tokens for other stuff later. Lucas et al. argue that researchers should use items with tangible, real value for children, such as candy, stickers or toys, since the use of “symbolic” tokens poses additional cognitive demands on children and might affect experimental results.

Lucas et al. found, in their own study, that children made, on average, offers of 4.7 stickers in the ultimatum game and 3.99 stickers in the dictator game. That is, children seem to be making quite fair offers.

It is well established that adults give an average of 40% of the money at stake in ultimatum. But there is a big difference between the 4-year-olds’ 47% and the adults’ 40%. In adults, the mode (i.e., the most frequent answer) is 50%, while some adults give 40%, 30% or less, and almost no one offers more than 50%. However, some of Lucas el al.’s 4-year-olds offer more than 50%.  They call this phenomenon hyperfair offers. There is a qualitative difference between adults and children: adults oscillate between the fair (“half and half”) and the strategic (“less than half”). Many children, by way of contrast, offer more than is fair, more than half the stake.

“(…) the percentage of hyperfair offers (…) increased from 18% in the dictator game to 33% in the ultimatum game. Adults, in contrast, almost never make hyperfair offers (only 3.5% of offers in Lucas, Et al., (2007) were hyperfair).”

Lucas et al. also report that, in their study, children did not seem to take into account the behavior of the other player in their responses, even if it was unfair. In the dictator game, children did not change the amount of their offer in response to receiving either a low or fair offer from the friend. Children’s offers for the second game were also not affected by whether the friend had accepted or rejected the child’s first offer.

The results of the dictator game suggest that children in the sample are quite altruistic: “The adult average offer of 20% of the stake in the dictator game (Camerer, 2003) is usually interpreted as evidence that individuals have preferences for altruism, since proposers could offer less in a dictator game without fear of rejection. With an average offer in the dictator game of 40% of the stake, our sample of children made more altruistic offers than adults.”

Children’s average offer of 4 stickers (or 40% of the stickers at stake) doubles adults’ typical offer of 20% of the money at stake in dictator, and does not seem to far away from the 47% children offered in the ultimatum game. How do Lucas et al. explain these data? “(Children’s) ability to perform a cost/benefit analysis was limited. They did not seem to appreciate the degree to which they could “shade” their offers without penalty.” Thus, Lucas et al. are assuming that children have the desire or goal of keeping as many stickers as possible but they that their strategic thinking is deficient. “Children were more generous than they needed to be and were limited in their ability to act strategically in bargaining games in order to maximize their own benefits while avoiding the costs of rejection.”

Lucas et al.’s conclusion: “children are quite altruistic”, “they may have an innate sense of fairness and altruism.” This result is, in my opinion, over-simplistic. Previous research in economic psychology has established that adults are altruistic and fair to some degree, but also a little bit selfish and strategic. Lucas et al. assume, therefore, that either children are born altruistic, fair and strategic or they learn these behaviors along the way. If research shows that children are completely selfish, then altruism is learned. If it shows they are altruistic from the start, then it must be innate.

I quote them: “We predicted that children would perform similarly to adults in showing preferences for fairness and altruism. Alternatively, and as some others have found, children could be less fair, indicating that fairness must be learned over the course of development.”

They start with a binary opposition between selfishness and altruism. In this approach, learning is seen as lineal, cumulative, unidirectional. They start with some innate concepts and, while learning, children simply absorb information from their milieu or copy adult models, until they reach the end-point.

There are other possibilities, however. For example: young children might be neither selfish nor altruistic. They might be following other types of reciprocity not related to the fair, contract-like, 50/50 reciprocity of adults. They might use an associative reciprocity of the kind “I give a lot of stickers to the other kid because I like to make friends” (see Faigenbaum, 2005), that are typical of children’s peer cultures and of exchanges within the family. Such an approach dispels the apparent inconsistencies of previous research: it’s not just that children are not yet able to think “strategically”. They are not even interested in this kind of reasoning.

Associative reciprocity might explain why kindergartners make large ultimatum offers and accepted small ultimatum offers of candy (Murnighan & Saxon, 1998) or why 4-year-olds can be so altruistic when playing dictator (Benenson, Pascoe and Radmore, 2007). It might also explain the results of Lucas et al.’s own research, for example, why children give 40% of the stake in the dictator game.

Some references

Faigenbaum, G. (2005). Children’s Economic Experience: Exchange. Buenos Aires: LibrosEnRed.

Harbaugh, W. T., Krause, K. S., & Liday, S. J. (2003). Bargaining by Children. Social Science Research Network, 1–40. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.436504

Lucas, M., Wagner, L., & Chow, C. (2008). Fair game: The intuitive economics of resource exchange in four-year olds. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, And, 2(3), 74–88. Retrieved from http://137.140.1.71/jsec/articles/volume2/issue3/JSEC2-3_Lucas.pdf

Murnighan, J. K., & Saxon, M. S. (1998). Ultimatum bargaining by children and adults. Journal of Economic Psychology, 19(4), 415–445. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-4870(98)00017-8

Exploring the first possessor bias in children. Nole & Keil.

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Noles, N. S., & Keil, F. C. (2019). Exploring the first possessor bias in children. PLoS ONE, 14(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209422

Very interesting and insightful paper. The authors set out to explore an apparent contradiction: on the one hand, very young children (even 2-year-olds in some studies) are adept at linking property to owners. On the other, there is research that reports that children systematically conserve property with the first possessor, even after a legitimate transfer of the property to a second possessor (e.g., after a sale, a present).

This study tests children, ages 7 through 10, for the presence of a first possessor bias in first- and third-person situations, and for different types of property transfers (gift, sale, loss, etc.)

A first experiment used third-person scripts depicting different types of property transfers. The authors found that seven- and eight-year-olds, but not older children, exhibited a first possessor bias. “Children under 9 commonly inferred that first-possessors maintained ownership of property, even after they unambiguously transferred the property to another person.” “Experiment 1 reveals that the first possessor bias influences ownership attributions among children age 7 and 8, but not 9 and 10.” “Experiment 1 demonstrates that the first possessor bias persists much longer into development than previously thought.” “This result replicates previous findings and expands upon those studies, suggesting that the first possessor bias influences a wider swath of property transfers than previously demonstrated, and that children’s ownership attributions are affected by this bias for longer than previously reported.”

At the same time, they found that the bias was greatly attenuated or absent when property transfers were presented in a first-person context. This was demonstrated in a second experiment, in which “Participants were always framed as the recipients or second actor in each scenario, and they were asked who owned the target object at the end of each trial. Participants indicated that the item either belonged to them or to the experimenter.” “In Experiment 2, all age groups demonstrated attenuated endorsement of the first possessor with respect to stealing (…) context powerfully influences intuitions about property transfers in both children and adults.” “Experiment 2 provides an explanation for the mismatch between intuitions that children do understand property transfers early in development, and findings that children’s intuitions about property transfers are fundamentally biased. Specifically, manipulating the presentation context (i.e., presenting transfers in a first-person context) resulted in children generating adult-like ownership attributions for typical property transfers such as giving and selling.”

One important consequence for the study of the development of ownership is that there is a big gap between first- and third-person reasoning. Thus one can reconcile research by Rossano, Rakoczy, & Tomasello (2011) among others, that shows that 3-year-olds recognize property rights when laboratory situations resemble real-life situations, with other studies which use third-person narratives and find errors in reasoning about property rights in children until at least age 10 (Kim & Kalish, 2009).

The authors speculate that the first-possessor bias has adaptive value: “it is possible that young children are less adept at reasoning about property transfers because these events are more ambiguous, and more likely to be intervened upon, than non-transfer scenarios. Given these circumstances, maintaining strong bonds between owners and their property may be a more functional approach for young children than reasoning in a more adult-like and “accurate” manner.”

Kim, S., & Kalish, C. W. (2009). Children’s ascriptions of property rights with changes of ownership. Cognitive Development, 24(3), 322–336. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.COGDEV.2009.03.004

Noles, N. S., & Keil, F. C. (2019). Exploring the first possessor bias in children. PLoS ONE, 14(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209422

Rossano, F., Rakoczy, H., & Tomasello, M. (2011). Young children’s understanding of violations of property rights. Cognition, 121(2), 219–227.