Frankie T. K. Fong

Victoria University of Wellington · School of Psychology

Recent findings using the compassionate responding paradigm suggest that preschool children will not help a distressed target (puppets or adults) when it is costly to do so. This study will examine whether reading a storybook that promotes compassionate behavior translates to greater costly compassionate helping using the same experimental paradigm...

Using a novel exchange paradigm, we demonstrate that Australian preschool children from middle to high socioeconomic backgrounds may be capable of executing a mutually beneficial exchange. In Study 1, 3- to 5-year-old children completed a tower building task, in which they were given an opportunity to make trading choices via preset options that co...

We concur with the authors of the two target articles that Open Science practices can help combat the ongoing reproducibility and replicability crisis in psychological science and should hence be acknowledged as responsible research practices in hiring and promotion decisions. However, we emphasize that another crisis is equally threatening the cre...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

This study investigated the individual influences of conventionality and designer’s intent on function judgments of possibly malfunctioning artifacts. Children aged 4 and 5 years and 6 to 8 years were presented with stories about an artifact with two equally plausible functions, one labeled as either conventional or designed. Subsequently, a charac...

Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety‐three 4–6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non‐ritualisti...

Children have a proclivity to learn through faithful imitation, but the extent to which this applies under significant cost remains unclear. To address this, we investigated whether 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children ( N = 97) would stop imitating to forego a desirable food reward. We presented participants with a task involving arranging marshmallows and c...

Empirical findings and theorizations of both imitation and selective trust offer different views on and interpretations of children's social learning mechanisms. The imitation literature provides ample documentation of children's behavioural patterns in the acquisition of socially appropriate norms and practices. The selective trust literature prov...

Recent decades have seen a rapid acceleration in global participation in formal education, due to worldwide initiatives aimed to provide school access to all children. Research in high income countries has shown that school quality indicators have a significant, positive impact on numeracy and literacy—skills required to participate in the increasi...

This study investigated the individual influences of conventionality and designer’s intent on function judgments of possibly malfunctioning artifacts. Children aged 4 to 5 and 6 to 8 years were presented with stories about an artifact with two equally plausible functions, one labelled as either conventional or designed. Subsequently, a character at...

Across two studies, we demonstrate that children may be capable of negotiation earlier than previously thought, using a novel paradigm. In Study 1, 3- to 5-year-old children in Australia completed a tower-building task, in which they were given an opportunity to make trading choices that could allow both them and a confederate to succeed. A majorit...

We concur with the authors of the two target articles that Open Science practices can help combat the ongoing reproducibility and replicability crisis in psychological science and should hence be acknowledged as responsible research practices in hiring and promotion decisions. However, we emphasize that another crisis is equally threatening the cre...

The target article elaborates upon an extant theoretical framework, “Imitation and Innovation: The Dual Engines of Cultural Learning.” We raise three major concerns: (1) There is limited discussion of cross-cultural universality and variation; (2) overgeneralization of overimitation and omission of other social learning types; and (3) selective imi...

Cross-cultural research provides invaluable information about the origins of and explanations for cognitive and behavioral diversity. Interest in cross-cultural research is growing, but the field continues to be dominated by WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) researchers conducting WEIRD science with WEIRD participants,...

Self-regulation is a widely studied construct, generally assumed to be cognitively supported by executive functions (EFs). There is a lack of clarity and consensus over the roles of specific components of EFs in self-regulation. The current study examines the relations between performance on a) a self-regulation task (Heads, Toes, Knees Shoulders T...

Robots are an increasingly prevalent presence in children’s lives. However, little is known about the ways in which children learn from robots and whether they do so in the same way as they learn from humans. To investigate this, we adapted a previously established imitation paradigm centered on inefficient tool use. Children (3- to 6-year-olds; N...

We report on a study in which 4- to 6-year-olds were presented with a sticker-retrieval task and asked to choose between one of two tools they could use to complete it. One of the tools was efficient but verbally identified to be the one that “nobody” uses; the other option was less efficient, but children were told it was the tool that “everybody”...

Human behaviors are greatly influenced by social norms, with children developing a propensity for high-fidelity imitation from a young age. We evaluated the extent to which, in a tool-using task, children conform to a sub-optimal approach when a more efficient alternative is available. Participants were sampled from an urban city in Australia, and...

Children recognise the social value of imitation but do not opt for tools that are ‘normative’ if they are also dysfunctional. We investigated whether children would replicate a normative method in a tool‐learning task if it was instrumentally functional but less efficient than an alternative. Four‐ to six‐year‐old children were presented with a st...

Since the proliferation of television sets into households began over half a century ago there has been widespread interest in the impact that viewing has on young children's development. Such interest has grown with the increasing availability of smart phones and tablets. In this review we examine the literature documenting human social learning a...

Children selectively imitate in‐group over outgroup individuals under certain experimental conditions. We investigated whether this bias applies to gender in‐groups in China. Three‐ and five‐year‐olds were shown how to operate novel objects by same‐gender and opposite‐gender models. Results indicate that the combination of verbally highlighting the...

This study tested potential mediating effects of household screen media experience (HSME) on the relationship between SES and six aspects of preschooler’s sociality: social cognition, independence, aggression, social adaptivity, peer relationship and emotional control. A total of 471 parents of 3- to 6-year-old children completed an online question...