Cognitive predictors of low-income preschoolers’ moral judgments about physical harm: A longitudinal person-centered study

This study sought to identify heterogeneous profiles of preschool children’s moral judgments and cognitive predictors of those profiles. Children ( N = 106, M age = 52.78 months, SD = 6.61 months) completed a prototypical moral harm interview (Killen et al., 2011) at T1 and T2 (six months later), the five-task Theory of Mind battery (Wellman & Liu, 2004) and two executive function tasks (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Gerstadt et al., 1994) at T1. Cluster analysis revealed three primary clusters of moral judgment: Stable Harshness, Increasing Leniency , and Decreasing Leniency . ANCOVAs showed that the Stable Harshness group demonstrated numerous advanced cognitive abilities, the Increasing group showed lower receptive vocabulary and hot inhibitory control, and the Decreasing Leniency group showed lower receptive vocabulary versus the Stable Harshness group.