Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81

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Cognitive Development

How do children coordinate information about mental

states with social norms?
Fei Wang a,b,∗, Liqi Zhu a, Kan Shi b,∗∗
a
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Science, 4A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China
b
Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Science, 4A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: We investigated how 3–7-year-olds weigh and coordinate informa-

Social norm tion about specific mental states with social norms in the domain of
Theory of mind
contextually conventional rules. With increasing age, participants
Contextually conventional rule
increasingly took into account an actor’s mental state to predict
Coordination
Chinese culture that actor’s behavior. In a criticism judgment task, 7-year-olds could
assign criticism conditional on mental state, with response patterns
similar to those of adults; 5-year-olds assigned criticism regardless
of the actor’s mental state. Three-year-olds tended not to assign
criticism at all, irrespective of the actor’s mental state. Results indi-
cated that the ability to weigh and coordinate information about
mental states with understanding of norms depends on age and on
the particular type of judgment being made. To some extent, our
results may also reflect the influence of culture and parenting.
© 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Children’s theory of mind and normative reasoning are two intrinsically connected subfields of
social cognition (Chandler, Sokol, & Wainryb, 2000; Kalish, 2005, 2006; Núñez & Harris, 1998; Wellman
& Miller, 2008), but they are usually studied separately. The present study attempts to bridge the two.

∗ Corresponding author at: Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Science, Center for Social & Economic Behavior, 4A
Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China.
∗∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: wangf@psych.ac.cn, tsungyoung@163.com (F. Wang), shik@gucas.ac.cn (K. Shi).

0885-2014/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2010.09.002
 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81 73

1.1. Social norms

Social life involves a complex web of rules (Kalish & Cornelius, 2007). Rules about the moral, social
convention, and prudential domains have been well described (Hasebe, Nucci, & Nucci, 2004; Nucci,
Camino, & Sapiro, 1996; Nucci & Weber, 1995; Smetana, 1981, 1985, 1995; Smetana & Bitz, 1996;
Smetana, Campione-Barr, & Daddis, 2004; Smetana & Daddis, 2002; Yau & Smetana, 2003). Some
rules concern contextually conventional domains; that is, they are contingent on the social context,
applicable only in certain situations (for example, “eating food is forbidden in the classroom”). In other
contexts, engaging in the associated behavior is a matter of personal choice (Smetana & Bitz, 1996).
We chose to study single-domain, contextually conventional rules for several reasons. First, we
wished to avoid possible interference between children’s reactions to differing domains (Fiddick,
2004). Second, entering kindergarten or primary school exposes children to a number of these rules.
Third, we needed to be able to change rules arbitrarily. A contextually conventional rule can be changed
to an equally plausible alternative. Moral or prudential rules, by contrast, are not readily changed.
Neither can one easily ascertain who has the authority to change social conventional rules. Con-
textually conventional rules, however, tend to be established by specific, known authorities (Laupa,
1991). Finally, moral (Zelazo, Helwig, & Lau, 1996) and prudential acts have intrinsic consequences,
but contextually conventional rules do not. The outcome of an act strongly influences a young child’s
judgments about punishment and blame (Helwig, Zelazo, & Wilson, 2001). To investigate children’s
sensitivity to social rules and theory of mind, we asked children to weigh the roles of mental and
normative states in a situation in which no harmful outcome occurred.

1.2. Integrating theory of mind with normative reasoning research

In typical theory of mind research, the actor’s mental state relates to physical states or objects. For
example, the actor does not know that “the location of the chocolate has changed” (false belief), or the
actor wants to eat “a carrot, not a cookie” (desire) (Wellman & Gelman, 1998; Wellman & Liu, 2004).
An actor’s mental state can also relate to social norms; for example, a boy “does not know a new rule”
(false belief) or a girl “does not want to obey the rule” (desire). Hence, the first question we address:
How do children use their knowledge of mental and normative states to judge an actor’s behavior in
a social context?
Individuals often evaluate and judge their own and others’ social acts. Judgments can be pos-
itive or negative depending on whether an action conformed to or broke a rule (Wellman & Miller,
2008). But merely identifying an objective breach is insufficient to reach a proper evaluative judgment.
The actor’s mental state is another critical factor in ascribing blame in the contextually conventional
domain (Kalish & Cornelius, 2007). For example, an ignorant actor or one who fails accidentally is rarely
blamed for violating a rule, but willful disobedience is considered blameworthy (Núñez & Harris, 1998).
Therefore, we can conclude that normative reasoning rests on theory of mind (Wellman & Miller, 2008)
and that people employ theory of mind in evaluating actions within complex contexts. Hence, we ask
how children coordinate information about mental states with their normative beliefs in order to
evaluate behavior.

1.3. The cultural context and parenting practices

Chinese culture has been described as a collectivist one (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) that empha-
sizes the importance of obedience to parents and elders and maintenance of interpersonal harmonies
(Neff & Helwig, 2002). Cultural context may influence children’s judgments about whether certain
actions should be accepted as matters of personal jurisdiction or as matters constrained by social
rules (Nucci et al., 1996; Yau & Smetana, 2003). Rooted in and reflecting cultural context, Chinese par-
enting beliefs and practices exhibit certain characteristics (Chao, 1995; Fung, 1999) that are likely to
influence Chinese children’s normative reasoning. This possibility was explored in the present study.
74 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81

2. Study 1

How children understand other people’s beliefs is one of the earliest researched theory of mind
topics and has attracted much interest (Wellman, 2002; Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Researchers
have used various target objects about which a false belief may be held, and meta-analysis by Wellman
et al. (2001) established that the nature of a target object does not affect children’s performance.
However, in previous studies, the “target object” was a physical object or state that was perceptible
and easily verified (Flavell, Flavell, Green, & Moses, 1990; Flavell, Mumme, Green, & Flavell, 1992). If
an actor’s false belief instead concerned a social rule, what prediction would children make about that
person’s behavior? Using contextually conventional rules, Kalish and Cornelius (2007) found that over
40% of 4.5-year-old children believed that an (ignorant) actor would obey a new rule. However, in their
study, they provided justification for the new rule: The old rule caused a problem, so the authority
changed the rule. Thus, although they state that “in each case, the rule changes to an alternative that is
at least a plausible as the original,” the new rule in fact became more reasonable than the old one. The
justification may have caused the children to pay greater attention to the new rule and to conclude
that the actor would think that the new behavior was the right thing to do.
In our study, we utilized contextually conventional rules similar to those used by Kalish and
Cornelius (2007), but we did not include justifications. In addition to asking children to predict and to
evaluate the actor’s behavior, Kalish and Cornelius (2007) asked children whether an actor would “get
in trouble” for breaching the new rule. They found that even 7-year-olds judged that the actor would
get in trouble and proposed that this might indicate how children perceive the ways that authorities
think and act. To avoid this alternative interpretation, we instead ask, “Do you think the actor should
be blamed for failing to obey the new rule?”

3. Method

3.1. Participants

A total of 120 children participated. For various reasons, a few children did not complete the task.
The final sample consisted of thirty-one 3-year-olds (14 girls; mean age 3-3, range 3-0 to 3-6), thirty-six
5-year-olds (18 girls; mean age 5-3, range 5-0 to 5-7), and thirty-nine 7-year-olds (15 girls; mean age
7-3, range 7-0 to 8-1). Three- and 5-year-olds were recruited from a university-affiliated kindergarten
and 7-year-olds were recruited from an elementary school, both in Beijing.

3.2. Materials and procedure

The task involved two scenarios presented in pictures on 12.4 cm × 9.2 cm laminated cards. Each
comprised six cards and was structured to parallel the traditional false belief task: first, a rule was
described which specified a contextually conventional organizing behavior for kindergarten children.
Next, one child was identified as being absent because they had not arrived yet or were sick. During
that child’s absence, authorities in the kindergarten changed the rule and informed the other children
of the change. At this point, we were able to perform a manipulation check by asking the participant,
“What are the children supposed to do?” In the next part of the story, a child actor, who either knew or
did not know the new rule, was described as being about to “do something.” The participant was asked
what the child actor would do. In each scenario, the participant was reminded as to whether the child
actor had been absent or present in order to emphasize this fact. If the child actor had been absent, the
participant was told that the actor had not had any contact with children or teachers at the kindergarten
before performing the activity related to the rule. In the next step in the scenario, the actor breached
the new rule. The participant was then asked the third and critical question: “Should the actor be
blamed (written word pi1ping2 or oral word shuo1 in Chinese)?” and, if they answered affirmatively,
“A little, or more than a little?” For each scenario, participants were asked several comprehension
questions to assess whether they understood and remembered the important details of the story. If
participants answered any questions incorrectly, they were informed of the correct answers. The order
of story presentation was counterbalanced, as was whether the actor knew the new rule in each story.
 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81 75

Table 1
Number of participants giving 2, 1, or 0 correct responses, and total percentage of correct responses by age group on behavior
prediction question.

Correct responses Percentage

2 1 0

Knew the new rule

3 years 22 8 1 84%**
5 years 25 11 0 85%**
7 years 32 6 1 90%**
Did not know new rule
3 years 1 8 22 16%**
5 years 19 8 9 64%*
7 years 33 3 3 89%**

Percentages significantly different from chance expectation of 50% by a two-tailed t test are marked with an asterisk at p < .05
and a double asterisk at p < .01.

Each participant was interviewed individually in an approximately 10-min session by a female

experimenter in the child’s classroom. Prior to testing, all participants were familiarized with the crit-
icism rating scale, which consisted of an array of faces on two 12.4 cm × 9.2 cm cards. Once participants
felt comfortable and were familiar with the criticism scale, the experimenter said, “Today I am going
to show you some pictures and tell you about some things some kids in another kindergarten did. So
here is a story about another kindergarten. I’m going to ask you some questions as the story proceeds.”
The experimenter read each story as she showed the cards to the participant. The cards were placed
one by one in front of the participant and left there as reminders. After the child answered the three
questions for each scenario, the experimenter praised the child and offered a sticker or a pencil as a
gift.

4. Results and discussion

As preliminary analyses revealed no significant effect of gender, it was eliminated from subsequent
analyses.
In response to the first question, 98.4% of responses by 3-year-olds, 100% by 5-year-olds, and 97.4%
by 7-year-olds stated that the actors were supposed to obey the new rule. Therefore, children of all
ages in this study understood the stipulations of the new rule and were able to respond correctly to
changes in the conventions. This is consistent with previous findings (Kalish & Cornelius, 2007; Kalish,
Weissman, & Bernstein, 2000; Laupa, 1991; Smetana, 1985).
Responses to the second question were coded as correct or incorrect based on the actors’ beliefs
about the rule. For example, responding that an actor who knew the new rule would act according to
the new rule or that an actor who did not know the new rule would act according to the old rule were
considered correct predictions. Each participant was assigned a point for each scenario for which they
correctly predicted the child actor’s behavior, resulting in scores ranging from 0 to 2. Table 1 shows
performance for each age group. The column furthest to the right shows that all children reliably
predicted that the actor would obey the new rule when the actor was aware of it. When the actor was
not aware of the new rule, the percent of correct answers significantly increased from below chance to
above chance with increasing age. Separate chi-square tests were conducted to compare the numbers
of participants who made correct or incorrect predictions for each of the two belief states in each age
group; 3- and 5-year-old children made more incorrect predictions when the actor did not know the
new rule than when the actor knew the new rule, 2 (1) = 56.90, p < .001 and 2 (1) = 8.18, p = .007,
but the number of 7-year-olds’ correct responses did not vary by the actor’s belief state, 2 (1) = .07,
p = 1.00.
We categorized participants based on their response patterns across the two criticism questions. In
95% of cases, responses fell into one of three categories (Fig. 1). In the unconditional criticism category,
if the actor breached the new rule, the same level of criticism was assigned whether the actor knew
or did not know the new rule. In the conditional criticism category, if the actor knew and breached the
76 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81

Unconditional criticism Conditional criticism No criticism Other

Percentage of Each Category (%)

80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
3-year-old 5-year-old 7-year-old
Age Group

Fig. 1. Percentage of participants in each category on criticism judgment questions by age group.

new rule, the actor should be criticized. If the actor did not know, and thus accidentally breached the
new rule, no criticism or less intense criticism was assigned. In the no criticism category, whether the
actor knew or did not know the new rule, the actor did not deserve any criticism for breaching the
new rule. Finally, we assigned a few children to an other category as they did not fit into any of the
first three categories.
A chi-square test showed that the proportion of participants in each category varied by age group,
2 (6) = 91.61, p < .001. Separate chi-square tests showed that the majority (69%) of 7-year-olds, but
very few (11%) 3-year-olds, belonged to the conditional criticism category, 2 (1) = 47.17, p < .001.
The percentage of 5-year-olds who fell into this category was intermediate (22%), contrasted with 7-
year-olds, 2 (1) = 33.24, p < .001 and 3-year-olds, 2 (1) = 2.80, p = .111. For 5-year-olds, the dominant
category, which accounted for 72% of responses, was unconditional criticism, contrasted with 3-year-
olds, 2 (1) = 10.14, p = .002, and 7-year-olds, 2 (1) = 38.33, p < .001. Among 3-year-olds, the most
salient (32%) category was no criticism, contrasted with 5-year-olds, 2 (1) = 21.10, p < .001, and 7-
year-olds, 2 (1) = 15.73, p < .001.
Thus, 3-year-olds were likely to predict the actor’s behavior based on the rule, regardless of whether
the actor knew or did not know the rule. By age 7, children’s predictions were consistent with those
expected of adults. Although 5-year-olds tended to predict the actor’s behavior correctly in both belief
states, they made more incorrect predictions when the actor did not know the new rule than when
the actor knew the new rule. A possible explanation is that “wrong” behavior in a normative context
generally elicits a negative evaluation (bad) or outcome (criticism or punishment). As a result, children
may have been unwilling to predict disobedience because they wished to protect the actor from
criticism. Performance on the criticism judgment corroborates this interpretation to some extent.
Many of the children said that an actor who breached the rule deserved criticism whether or not the
actor knew the new rule, and this was especially true of 5-year-olds.
But if this is the explanation, how can we explain why almost a third of 3-year-olds assigned
no criticism at all? It is possible that children assumed the actor would want to obey the new rule
(even if the actor did not know the rule). As Kalish (2006) pointed out, “especially in the absence of
countervailing internal motives, young children may tend to expect people’s behavior to follow from
rules and obligations.” So, we wondered, if we were to present the actor’s intention directly and clearly,
would children predict the actor’s behavior more accurately? We address this question in Study 2.

5. Study 2

Diverse-desires tasks, also used to study theory of mind, are easier for children than false belief
tasks (see Wellman & Liu, 2004). As with physical objects or states, two persons may have contrasting
desires with respect to any given social rule. When an actor wants to obey or breach a rule, how do
children use this information to predict or judge behavior? Studies of moral judgment have explored
 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81 77

this question using diverse tasks. When asked to assign punishments, many 5- and 7-year-olds did
so based on the consequences of the act; the proportion was even greater when they were asked to
assess the act’s acceptability (Helwig et al., 2001; Zelazo et al., 1996). Likely because acts in the moral
and prudential domains have intrinsic consequences, children focused on consequence information
that overrode information about mental and normative states (Helwig et al., 2001; Zelazo et al., 1996).
This raises a question: How do children weigh and integrate normative and desire states when
the consequences of an act are not intrinsic? The literature on social conventions suggests several
alternatives. When social convention information was presented along with the actor’s desire, 5-year-
olds paid more attention to social conventions, even those that contradicted the actor’s desires, when
predicting an actor’s future behavior (Kalish, 1998; Kalish & Shiverick, 2004) and when judging the
actor’s emotion (Kalish, 1998). But younger children were likely to pay more attention to the actor’s
desire state than to the normative state under some conditions (Lagattuta, 2005; Lagattuta, Nucci, &
Bosacki, 2010; Núñez & Harris, 1998). Although much research has explored how children weigh and
integrate normative states with an actor’s desires, most of the rules used in earlier research focused on
the moral, social conventional, and prudential domains, using widely varying scenarios and tasks that
have led to disparate findings. Such findings are hard to generalize to the contextually conventional
domain, the domain we chose to address in Study 2.

6. Method

6.1. Participants

Most participants were the same as in Study 1; however, a few were absent from school, so we
recruited others to replace them. In total, thirty-two 3-year-olds (16 girls; mean age 3-3, range 3-0 to
3-6), thirty-six 5-year-olds (18 girls; mean age 5-3, range 5-0 to 5-7), and thirty-eight 7-year-olds (15
girls; mean age 7-3, range 7-0 to 8-1) participated.

6.2. Materials and procedure

Study 2 took place one week following Study 1. Each participant was presented two scenarios. Each
was depicted on seven 12.4 cm × 9.2 cm laminated cards and had a common structure: first, a teacher
established a new rule specifying a contextually conventional organizing behavior for the children
in the story. The first question, which also served as a manipulation check, asked: “What should the
children do?” Next, the story described a child actor who either wanted to obey or disobey the new
rule. Then, the actor was described as being about to do something. The second question was, “What
will the actor do?” After the participant answered, the actor was shown to have breached the rule
either accidentally or deliberately. Participants were asked the third critical question: “Should the
actor be blamed?” If they answered affirmatively, they were asked, “How much?” Other aspects of the
design, such as the comprehension questions, balancing of scenario presentation order, and balancing
of actors within the stories, were the same as in Study 1.

7. Results and discussion

As preliminary analyses revealed no significant effect of gender, it was eliminated from subsequent
analyses.
In responses to the first question, 95.4% of 3-year-olds and 100% of 5- and 7-year-olds claimed
that the child actor should obey the rule. As in Study 1, almost all of the children recognized that the
teacher’s announcement established the new rule.
Responses were coded as correct or incorrect based on the correspondence between the partic-
ipant’s answer and the actor’s desire. For example, responding either that the actor who wanted to
obey the rule would act according to the rule or that the actor who wanted to breach the rule would
breach the rule was considered a correct prediction. Children were given a point for each scenario for
which they correctly predicted the actors’ behavior, resulting in scores ranging from 0 to 2. Table 2
shows the performance of each age group. The column furthest to the right shows that most children
78 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81

Table 2
Number of participants giving 2, 1, or 0 correct responses, and total percentage of correct responses by age group on behavior
prediction question.

Correct responses Percentage

2 1 0

Want to obey
3 years 24 7 1 86%*
5 years 34 2 0 97%*
7 years 38 0 0 100%*
Want to breach
3 years 15 14 3 69%*
5 years 29 5 2 88%*
7 years 27 8 3 82%*
*
Percentages significantly (p < .01) different from chance expectation of 50% by a two-tailed t test.

reliably predicted the actor’s behavior in both conditions. Separate chi-square tests were conducted
to compare the numbers of participants who made correct or incorrect predictions in each of the two
desire states in each age group. More of the children made incorrect predictions when the actor wanted
to breach the rule than when the actor wanted to obey the rule, 2 (1) = 5.40, p = .034, 2 (1) = 4.82,
p = .055, 2 (1) = 15.42, p < .001, respectively, in the three age groups.
As in Study 1, we categorized participants based on their patterns of responses across the two crit-
icism questions. In the large majority of cases (93%), responses could be fit into one of three categories
(Fig. 2). In the unconditional criticism category, if the actor breached the new rule, equal criticism was
deserved whether the actor wanted to obey or to breach the new rule. In the conditional criticism cat-
egory, if the actor wanted to and breached the new rule, the participant assigned criticism. If the actor
did not want to, but breached the new rule accidentally, the participant did not assign criticism or
assigned criticism but the intensity of the criticism was less than the amount assigned when the actor
wanted to and did breach it deliberately. In the no criticism category, whether the actor wanted or did
not want to breach the new rule, the actor did not deserve any criticism for breaching the new rule.
We assigned a few children to an other category as they did not fit into any of the first three categories.
A chi-square test showed that the proportion of participants in each category varied by age group,
2 (6) = 73.80, p < .001. Separate chi-square tests showed that a substantial percentage (63%) of 7-
year-olds, compared to 3-year-olds, fell into the conditional criticism category, 2 (1) = 30.85, p < .001.
The percentage of 5-year-olds who fell into this category was intermediate (25%), contrasted with
7-year-olds, 2 (1) = 22.45, p < .001, and with 3-year-olds, 2 (1) = 1.23, p = .300.

Unconditional criticism Conditional criticism No criticism Other

80
Percentage of Each Category (%)

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
3-year-old 5-year-old 7-year-old
Age Group

Fig. 2. Percentage in each category on criticism judgment questions by age group in Study 2.
 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81 79

Of the 5-year-olds, 67% were in the unconditional criticism category, contrasted with 3-year-olds,
2 (1) = 5.43, p = .024, and with 7-year-olds, 2 (1) = 14.34, p <0.001. However, 7-year-olds and 3-year-
olds did not differ, 2 (1) = 1.85, p = .227.
The unique characteristic of the 3-year-olds was that 25% did not assign any criticism regardless
of whether the actor wanted to obey or to breach the new rule Here, 3-year-olds significantly differed
from 5-year-olds, 2 (1) = 20.40, p < .001, and from 7-year-olds, 2 (1) = 21.45 p < .001. No 5-year-olds
or 7-year-olds fell into the no criticism category.
Overall, children thus weighed the actor’s desire state more heavily than they did their normative
state, but the normative state did affect children’s behavior predictions. Many children were unwilling
to predict that the actor would breach the rule, even when told that the actor wanted to do so. This
result can partially explain why children performed poorly in Study 1.
The pattern on the criticism judgment task was similar to that found in Study 1. Compared with
Study 1, fewer 3-year-olds fell into the no criticism category. This may indicate that the cognitive
demand of the false belief task in Study 1 may have made the task difficult for 3-year-olds. However,
we still must explain why so many 5-year-olds assigned criticism regardless of the actor’s desire.

8. General discussion

The behavior prediction results show a developmental progression from limited to moderate to
adult-like understanding. When the actor knew or wanted to obey the rule, all children responded
that the actor would perform the new behavior. But when the actor did not know the new rule or
wanted to breach it, children’s behavior predictions became poorer at almost all ages. This shows
that children’s behavior predictions were affected by the actor’s normative state. One explanation
for this influence is that typical responses to rules are difficult to suppress. To correctly predict the
actor’s behavior, children needed to inhibit references to the rule that would usually bound the actor’s
behavior and refer instead to mental states. Younger children’s executive function may not be well
enough developed (Wellman, 2002) to inhibit typical responses to the rule. It is also possible that
children could predict that the actor would breach the rule but were reluctant or afraid to say so.
Study 2 supports this hypothesis, as children performed better when the actor wanted to obey the
rule. Responses to the criticism judgment question may also corroborate this perspective, as many
children assigned criticism to an actor who breached the rule, regardless of the actor’s mental state.
According to cognitive complexity and control theory (Frye, Zelazo, & Burack, 1998; Zelazo et al.,
1996), 3-year-olds can use simple if–then rules (e.g., if the outcome is negative, the actor will be
punished). However, it is difficult for them to use higher-order rules to determine how to assign
punishment. This difficulty persists until age 5. We assumed that most 3-year-olds would use a simple
if–then rule (i.e., if the actor breaches the rule, then criticize) and would assign criticism regardless
of the actor’s beliefs or desires. We also expected that most 5-year-olds would use a higher-order
if–then rule (i.e., if the actor breaches the rule, and if the actor knew the rule or breached the rule
deliberately, then criticize) and would consider the actor’s mental state when assigning criticism.
That is, we expected that most 3-year-olds would fall into the unconditional criticism category and
most 5-year-olds into the conditional criticism category. However, few 5-year-olds took the actor’s
belief or desire into account when assigning criticism, so that most fell into the unconditional criticism
category, and many 3-year-olds did not criticize the actor regardless of beliefs or desires (no criticism
category). This response pattern was identical and the results robust across the two studies.
Behavior prediction and criticism judgment may reflect not only level of cognitive development,
but also influences of culture and parenting practice. Obedience to rules and submission to authority
are highly valued in Chinese culture. Therefore, we speculate that Chinese children might assign more
weight to normative knowledge than to information about beliefs or desires when making judgments.
Our findings may reflect this cultural emphasis. Our findings may also reflect the influence of Chinese
parenting on children’s understanding of the link between criticism and rule-breaching. According to
Ho’s description (Fung, 1999), Chinese parents are highly “indulgent and lenient” before their children
reach the “age of understanding” at around 4–6 years but impose strict discipline on their children
after this point. We therefore speculate that children younger than 5 had not yet learned the rela-
tionship between criticism and rule-breaching. To test this hypothesis, we summed the unconditional
80 F. Wang et al. / Cognitive Development 26 (2011) 72–81

and conditional criticism categories to reveal the number of criticism judgments children assigned in
response to breaching behavior: 56.5% of the 3-year-olds in Study 1 and 64.1% in Study 2 assigned
criticisms to the breaching behavior. Neither of these percentages was significantly different from a
chance expectation of 50% using a two-tailed t test. That is, 3-year-olds in this study did not demon-
strate understanding of a connection between rule-breaching and criticism (however, see Helwig
et al., 2001; Zelazo et al., 1996). Although 5-year-olds appeared to have learned this relationship, they
seemed to understand it to be unconditional. Not until about age 7 did children exhibit adult-like
recognition of the conditional relationship between rule-breaching and criticism.
There are some limitations to our study. First, we did not assess performance on traditional false
belief or diverse-desires tasks. If we had, we could have directly compared their developmental tra-
jectory to the one identified in our study. Second, when children’s criticism evaluations did not vary
depending on the actor’s mental state, performance might have improved had we then asked, “Do you
think that the two actors deserve the same criticism?” Third, a limitation affecting Study 2 is the fact
that the same children participated in the two studies. Our scenarios were based on actual rules used
in this specific kindergarten and likely would not have made sense to young children from a different
school; therefore, we could not recruit additional participants from another kindergarten.
Our research confirms that children of ages 3, 5, and 7 focus on more than one factor when predict-
ing behavior or assigning criticism in social contexts. Children may differ in the degree of importance
they assign to different attributes, alone or in combination. With age, children’s judgments gradually
become more adult-like, but their ascriptions are almost always influenced by normative state. Fur-
thermore, children’s understanding of the relationship between criticism and rule-breaching behavior
suggests a developmental trajectory worth exploring further. Finally, results of the present study
reflect a general cognitive developmental progression, but they may also reflect the influence of Chi-
nese culture on children’s normative reasoning (thereby lending support to Ho’s description of Chinese
parenting). These findings, and the fact that we have connected research on children’s theory of mind
to study of normative reasoning, identify a path for future research.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Nos. 2010CB8339004; 30970911; 70632003). We are indebted to Pro-
fessor Charles Kalish for his valuable advice about the experimental design; to Danzhi Chen, Guoping
Liu and Hua Chen for material design and data collection; to the children in the kindergarten affiliated
with the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Kexueyuan elementary school for
their participation; to Dr. Yiwen Chen for statistical assistance. Appreciation is extended to Ms. Dong-
mei Liu, Ms. Jing Peng and Ms. Xu and Ms. Xu for their assistance with data collection. The authors
thank the editor, Deanna Kuhn, and Three anonymous reviewers of this journal for their insightful
comments and Drs. Rhoda E. and Edmund F. Perozzi for very extensive English and content editing
and revisions.

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