Ori Friedman

Ownership rights influence thought and behavior in relation to the physical world and in relation to other people. We review recent research examining the nature of ownership rights, and how young children and adults conceive of them. This research examines issues such as the rights ownership is assumed to confer; whether ownership rights reflect principles specific to ownership or instead depend on more general moral principles; and whether ownership rights are inventions of law and culture, or whether they have a more natural basis.

In two experiments, we told 6- to 7-year-olds about improbable or impossible outcomes and about impossible outcomes concerning ordinary or magical agents. In both experiments, children claimed that the outcomes were impossible and could not happen, but nonetheless generated realistic and natural explanations for the outcomes. These findings show that 6- to 7-year-olds are strongly inclined to provide natural explanations. The findings are also informative about children’s judgments about whether outcomes are possible, and further suggest that asymmetries between children’s predictions and explanations may stem from differences in how these 2 forms of reasoning are constrained by possibility. 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

We report two experiments investigating how 3- to 5-year-olds learn general knowledge from pretend play—how they learn about kinds of things from information about particular individuals in pretend play. Children watched pretend-play enactments in which animals showed certain behaviors or heard utterances conveying the same information. When children were subsequently asked about who shows the behavior, children who watched pretend play were more likely to give generic responses than were children who heard the utterances. These findings show that children generalize information from pretend play to kinds even without being prompted to think about kinds, that pretend play can be informative about familiar kinds, and also that pretend play is a more potent source for general knowledge than are utterances about individuals. 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

Group ownership is ubiquitous—property is owned by countries, corporations, families, and clubs. However, people cannot understand group ownership by simply relying on their conceptions of ownership by individuals, as group ownership is subject to complexities that do not arise when property is individually owned. We report 6 experiments investigating whether children ages 3 to 6 understand group ownership. In Experiments 1 and 2 children were asked who different objects belong to, and they appropriately judged that certain objects are more likely to belong to a group than to individual people. Experiments 3 and 4 investigated whether children understand the limits of group ownership. Children saw vignettes where agents modified or depleted property. Children ages 3 and older understood that individual members of a group should not deplete group-owned property, and children ages 5 and 6 understood that individual members should not modify group-owned property. Finally, Experiments 5 and 6 investigated whether children understand the benefits of group ownership. Children ages 5 and 6 judged that it is more acceptable for a group member to take group property than for a nonmember to do this, and children ages 4 to 6 judged that group members can take more group resources than can nonmembers. Together, these results are informative about how children conceive of group ownership rights, and about children’s conceptions of groups. 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

Improbable events are surprising. However, it is unknown whether children consider probability when attributing surprise to other people. We conducted four experiments that investigate this issue. In the first three experiments, children saw stories in which two characters received a red gumball from two gumball machines with different distributions, and children then judged which character was more surprised. Experiment 1 shows development in children’s use of probability to infer surprise. Children aged 7 correctly inferred that the character with a lower chance of getting a red gumball would be more surprised, but 4- to 6-year-olds did not. Experiment 2 shows that children’s performance does not improve when the probability of getting a red gumball is zero and should be maximally surprising. Experiment 3 demonstrates that 6-year-olds’ performance improves when they are prompted to consider probabilities, but not when they are prompted to consider the characters’ beliefs. Experiment 4 replicates this finding, but using a new design in which children attributed emotions to just a single character. Together these findings suggest that by age 6, a conceptual shift occurs, in which children begin to integrate their understanding of probability with their understanding of surprise. 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

We report evidence that children believe that pretend objects and entities should normally be represented as having their factual properties, and that pretense ought not contradict their general knowledge. Across two experiments, 3- and 4-year-olds spontaneously provided corrections and protested pretense scenarios in which animals produced sounds typical of a different species. Children rarely protested pretense in which animals made species-typical sounds or spoke in English. Children even provided protests and corrections when the experimenter signaled that the pretense might include unrealistic elements. These findings build on accounts claiming that children use their general knowledge to generate and interpret pretense, and show that they attach normative force to the content of pretend play. More generally, the findings advance knowledge of how children respond to information that is counter-intuitive and inconsistent with their expectations. 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

In three experiments, we examined whether young children use emotional reactions to infer relations, focusing on their inferences of ownership relations. In Experiment 1, children aged three to five years inferred ownership from emotional reactions to a positive event, in which a broken object became fixed. In Experiment 2, children aged three to six years inferred ownership from emotional reactions to a negative event in which an object became broken. Finally, in Experiment 3, children aged four and five again used sad emotional reactions to a negative event to infer ownership, but they did not use these reactions to infer who likes an object. These findings reveal that children use emotional reactions to infer one kind of relation between people and objects. 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

We report two experiments supporting the theory that children’s understanding of ownership rights is related to their notions of body rights. Experiment 1 investigated 4- to 7-year-olds’ developing sensitivity to physical contact in their judgments about the acceptability of behaving in relation to owned objects and body parts. Experiment 2 used a simpler design to investigate this in 3- and 4-year-olds. Findings confirmed two predictions of the theory. First, in both experiments, children’s judgments about ownership and body rights were similarly affected by physical contact. Second, judgments about both kinds of rights were yoked in development; age-related changes in judgments about ownership rights were paralleled by changes in judgments about body rights. Our findings have additional import for theories of ownership rights because they suggest that physical contact may be a crucial factor in whether behaviors targeting property are judged to be permissible. 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

Owners control permission—they forbid and permit others to use their property. So it is reasonable to assume that someone controlling permission over an object is its owner. The authors tested whether preschoolers infer ownership in this way. In the first experiment, 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, chose as owner of an object a character who granted or denied another character permission to use it. In Experiment 2, older 3-year-olds chose as owner of an object a character who prevented another character from using it when prevention was accomplished by controlling permission but not otherwise. Younger 3-year-olds chose between the characters at chance. These findings indicate that preschoolers infer ownership from control of permission. 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Three experiments examined 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds' use of potential cues to geographic background. In Experiment 1, 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds used a speaker's foreign accent to infer that they currently live far away, but 6‐year‐olds did not. In Experiment 2, children at all ages used accent to infer where a speaker was born. In both experiments, race played some role in children's geographic inferences. Finally, in Experiment 3, 6‐year‐olds used language to infer both where a speaker was born and where they currently live. These findings reveal critical differences across development in the ways that speaker characteristics are used as inferential cues to a speaker's geographic location and history. 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

In three experiments, two hundred and ninety‐seven 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds were asked to describe objects to a listener, and their answers were coded for the presence of general and specific facts. In Experiments 1 and 2, the listener's knowledge of the kinds of objects was manipulated. This affected references to specific facts at all ages, but only affected references to general facts in children aged 5 and older. In Experiment 3, children's goal in communicating was either pedagogical or not. Pedagogy influenced references to general information from age 4, but not references to specific information. These findings are informative about how children vary general and specific information in conversation, and suggest that listeners' knowledge and children's pedagogical goals influenced children's responses via different mechanisms. 2018 APA, all rights reserved)