Abstract
This study examined the moral discourse of 79 dyads of Taiwanese parents and children during shared storybook readings and the associations with children’s cognitive and affective moral attributions. This study involved four- to six-year-old children who participated in a receptive language test and a moral reasoning task. Their responses were analyzed to determine the levels of moral reasoning including both their cognitive moral judgment and their affective attribution. After the tests, the parent–child dyads participated in shared storybook reading sessions using two moral-related storybooks. The utterances of the parents and their children were recorded and coded to analyze how they described, discussed, and evaluated moral experiences engendered by the story’s protagonist. Study results show that parents’ dominant type of moral discourse was teaching an expected moral behavior to the child, followed by a moral evaluation of the child’s personality. When discussing the protagonist’s moral experience, parents produced more extended descriptions and explanations to discuss their children’s own experiences. Aligning with the emerging integrated cognition–emotion perspective in moral development research, hierarchical regression analysis results showed that the parents’ moral discourse that was explanatory and extended to the child’s own experiences was associated with the child’s moral reasoning levels of affective attribution, even when controlled for age and language ability. Based on this Taiwanese sample, the findings of this study contribute to the literature on parental discourse and moral development in young children.
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Reference for Storybooks
Zheng, M. Y. (2010). Good Child Life Story Series: The growth of Liang-Liang. Taipei, Taiwan: Penguin Books. http://tachien.com.tw/product2.php?rid1=10&rid=32
Book One: Liang-Liang is a carefree little girl. She is sometimes naughty and lies, and often does wrong things, just like many children. But because of the teaching of the parents, Liang-Liang can always learn good behaviors and get rid of bad things [Translated; Annotation by Eslite Bookstore].
Book Two: This book can help you teach children how to develop a child’s generous personality, which is very important. Children have strong imitation ability, and with their curiosity, you can let Liang–Liang to guide them and grow with them [Translated; Annotated by Sanmin Publishing].
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the preschool teachers for their help and to the parents and children who participated in this study. This study was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, Republic of China, under Grant Number MOST 103-2410-H-134-012 to Y.J. Chou.
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YJC designed the research, collected and analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. BYH revised the manuscript. SKR guided the final revision.
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Appendix: Moral Reasoning Task
Appendix: Moral Reasoning Task
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Chou, YJ., Hu, BY. & Roberts, S.K. Features of Taiwanese Parents’ Moral Discourse in Shared Storybook Reading: Exploring Associations Related to Preschoolers’ Cognitive and Affective Moral Attribution. Early Childhood Educ J 49, 1007–1019 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-020-01110-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-020-01110-z