Development of preschoolers´ deontic reasoning

A total of 96 preschoolers´ deontic reasoning was explored through 4 sets of pictures representing the protagonist´s, Mom´s and bilateral violation of a presetted agreement. Results showed significant developmental trends and perspective effects in preschoolers´ deontic reasoning, that is, with age more children could detect mom´s violation, while their detection of child protagonist´s violation remains relatively lower and even showed a decrease during 4-5 year-old. In contrast, preschoolers tended to pay much more attention to the protagonist´s violation and ignore mom´s in bilateral violation situation. These results indicated the developing expansion of preschoolers´ autonomy and their monitoring of the behavior of authorities, and implicated a possible parenting method in practice.