Prosocial behavior refers to a wide range of voluntary actions intended to benefit other persons. High levels of prosocial behavior in early childhood have been linked to social acceptance, peer popularity, lower levels of externalizing problems, and academic success. Thus, an important issue for researchers in developmental psychology is to establish a set of concurrent and longitudinal predictors of children's and adolescents' prosocial behavior. The present cross-sectional project aims to contribute to this field by examining the direct and indirect effects of empathy, theory-of-mind and receptive language on prosocial behavior in a sample of primary school children between 8 and 11 years of age. In addition, a specific aim will be to determine whether the positive or negative influences of the four social-cognitive measures differ between boys and girls. Empathy (differentiated into perspective taking and empathic concern) and prosocial behavior will be measured via self-report questionnaires, whereas theory-of-mind and receptive language will be assessed through age-appropriate, standardized tasks. The results will have important consequences for the development of effective intervention programs focused on the enhancement of prosocial orientation in primary-school children with or without behavior problems. Furthermore, they will help to uncover patterns of development specific to boys and girls.
Previous studies have begun to investigate the effects of empathy, ToM, and language abilities on prosocial behavior. However, most of them have assessed these associations in preschoolers (before the age of 7: e.g., Braza et al., 2009; Girard et al., 2017; Walker, 2005) or in adolescents (after the age of 13: Eisenberg et al., 2001; Laghi et al., 2018; McMahon et al., 2006; Van der Graaff et al., 2018). Thus, the present study will be one of the first to examine the concurrent predictors of social competence in the period of late childhood, which is critical for several reasons. First, although the foundations for cognitive and social-emotional skills emerge during early childhood, these skills undergo further development during middle childhood and into adolescence. For example, both empathic concern, perspective taking and prosocial behavior show significant and prolonged increases with age (Berndt, 1981; Davis & Franzoi, 1991; Eisenberg et al., 1998; Mestre et al., 2009; Van der Graaff et al., 2014). Second, the transition to secondary education requires the accomplishment of new developmental tasks (e.g., learning to study and work in groups) and poses greater demands to children¿s social and cognitive abilities. The examination of primary school age is therefore crucial, because in that period the mutual influences of social-cognitive abilities (empathy, ToM and language) and prosocial behaviors may be particularly pronounced (Austin et al., 2015).
One specific aim of our project will be to investigate possible differences between boys and girls in the associations between the four variables. This is important because the moderating role of gender in primary school children requires further study. Until now, the very few studies that have considered gender differences in the relations of empathy, ToM and language with prosocial behavior have been focused on preschoolers (Braza et al., 2009; Longobardi et al., 2016; Stowe et al., 1999; Walker, 2005) or on adolescents (McMahon et al., 2006; Van der Graaff et al., 2018) and have produced mixed results. Our data will provide further evidence on these questions and will therefore help to uncover gender-differentiated patterns of development.
Lastly, the present project will use path analysis to examine mediational and indirect effects, an issue which has been often overlooked in the literature. In the real world, the effects of a given variable will seldom operate in isolation: rather, different cognitive/affective skills are likely to interact in complex ways to produce joint consequences on social behaviors. Understanding these interactions represents an important avenue for researchers in developmental psychology.