Children's Moral Development Scientific Study Summary

A Moral Developmental Perspective on Children’s
Eyewitness Identification: Does Intent Matter?


This article is research about children’s development of morality. The

children were asked to identify perpetrators in eyewitness scenarios, and the

presumption the researchers made is that identification of the perpetrators

calls for a moral judgement from the children that may differ depending on

the age of the child.


The researchers had a hypothesis. Their hypothesis is that the age of

the child impacts the child’s moral framing of the event will impact the

child’s response to the eyewitness, specifically the decisional criterion used

to identify the perpetrator. More specifically, the researchers thought that

the older children, adolescents, would have a high sensitivity to the intent of

the perpetrator and adjust their bias accordingly. In other words, the

researchers thought the older children would be more accurate in their

judgements. They also believed that the younger children would be less

influenced by intent and thus they would be more influenced by memory

than morality. The hypothesis is that the children’s moral development would

increase with age.


Two experimental studies were conducted to study the moral

development of older and younger children. They both involved children

making moral judgements, specifically about the consequences and

intentions, about a perpetrator committing a harmful act.